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Conor_Stewart t1_j5dmu17 wrote

Unfortunately since they don’t really know what causes Crohns, they also don’t know 100% how to treat it, so different treatments work for different people, there are a few that tend to be more effective for more people but you never know until you try them. Adalimumab (what is in Humira) worked for me but gave me some of the most unusual and severe side effects it can, like potentially a white matter lesion in my brain. The biologics are still relatively new and they don’t know the very long term effects of them and there are many different types within biologics, I am now getting put on vedolizomab (Entyvio), which works in a totally different way to adalimumab which is an anti TNF drug, the drugs work in different way and different areas of the body, adalimumab affects the whole body whereas vedolizomab only really affects the bowel. Since they don’t know what causes it, it takes time to find what type of medication works well for it.

So it is all very well people saying or recommending what drug worked for them or someone they know, but the disease is so varied that what worked for them might not work for you, any decent GI doctor knows of all these drugs, and should keep up with what new ones come out, and they probably have a much better idea of what is likely to work. It just takes trial and error and that does take a while.

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