Posts by Ashwin N. Ananthakrishnan, MBBS, MPH
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AGA Guideline Makes the Case for Biomarkers in Managing Crohn's Disease
Ashwin Ananthakrishnan, MD, discusses the AGA guideline's key recommendations for managing Crohn's disease and the evolving role of biomarkers in these treatments.
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Fatigue in Inflammatory Bowel Disease Linked to Substantial Economic Burden
Ashwin N. Ananthakrishnan, MBBS, MPH, and colleagues found that healthcare resource utilization was significantly higher for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients with fatigue than those without. The same was true for IBD-related and all-cause medical and pharmacy costs, regardless of IBD subtype or severity.
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Role of Biomarkers in Ulcerative Colitis Management
Ashwin N. Ananthakrishnan, MBBS, MPH, and colleagues were part of an American Gastroenterological Association panel that recommended how to use three biomarkers—serum C-reactive protein, fecal calprotectin, and fecal lactoferrin—in place of endoscopic assessment of ulcerative colitis.
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Consensus Statement: Lifestyle and Behavior Modification for Management of IBD
Ashwin N. Ananthakrishnan, MBBS, MPH, director of the Crohn's and Colitis Center, helped direct the International Organization for the Study of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD) in issuing guidance about the role of lifestyle and behavior modification in managing Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.
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Humanitarian of the Year: Q&A With Ashwin Ananthakrishnan, MBBS, MPH
Ashwin N. Ananthakrishnan, MBBS, MPH, director of the Crohn's and Colitis Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, was awarded Humanitarian of the Year by the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation New England Chapter. In this Q&A, he discusses what the award means and how his team's research improves care for IBD patients.
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Medicare Data Suggest Vedolizumab Safe, Effective in Older Adults with IBD
Massachusetts General Hospital researchers have found that older adults with inflammatory bowel disease who initiate vedolizumab have a lower risk of infection-related hospitalization than those initiating a tumor necrosis factor inhibitor.
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Eating Ultra-processed Food Linked to Higher Risk of New-onset Crohn's Disease
Using data from three very large U.S. prospective cohorts, gastroenterologists at Massachusetts General Hospital linked higher recent or cumulative consumption of ultra-processed foods with a significantly increased risk of Crohn's disease, although not ulcerative colitis.
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Combining Immunomodulator With Vedolizumab or Ustekinumab Does Not Improve IBD Outcomes
Anne Hu, MD, and Ashwin N. Ananthakrishnan, MBBS, MPH, of the Department of Gastroenterology, and colleagues found that combining a thiopurine or methotrexate with either vedolizumab or ustekinumab does not result in improved clinical or endoscopic outcomes in the first year.
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No Incremental Safety Risk Attributable to Anti-TNF Therapy in Older Patients with Ulcerative Colitis
By pooling data from four clinical trials, David Cheng, PhD, Kelly C. Cushing, and Ashwin N. Ananthakrishnan, MBBS, MPH, and colleagues found that ulcerative colitis patients who are ≥60 years old treated with tumor necrosis factor-α antagonists did not exhibit increased risk of serious adverse events attributable to the treatment.
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Fatigue in Patients with IBD Linked to Changes in Gut Microbiome
Nienke Z. Borren, MD, Ashwin N. Ananthakrishnan, MBBS, MPH, and colleagues are the first to demonstrate a link between fatigue in inflammatory bowel disease and alterations in serum metabolites and fecal microbes—with implications for other autoimmune disorders.
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Very Few Older Adults Are Included in Trials of IBD Medications
Only 0.9% of patients in recent randomized, controlled trials of medications for inflammatory bowel disease were ≥65 years old, and for trials of biologic agents, the figure was 0.5%, Massachusetts General Hospital researchers determined based on the first systematic review of this issue.
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Immunosuppressive Therapy for IBD Not Linked to Increased Risk of COVID-19
Kristen E. Burke, MD, MPH, Bharati Kochar, MD and Ashwin N. Ananthakrishnan, MD, MPH, of the Crohn's and Colitis Center, and colleagues collected reassuring data that patients with inflammatory bowel disease can continue using immunosuppressive medication during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Weight Gain Is Modest Across Classes of Biologic Therapy for IBD
In a prospective study, overall weight gain among IBD patients initiating biologic therapy was less than three pounds in the first year.
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Frailty Is a Risk Factor for Immunosuppression-related Infection in Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Independent of age and comorbidities, pretreatment frailty doubled the risk of infection in the first year after immunosuppressive therapy in patients with inflammatory bowel disease.
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Healthy Lifestyle Tied to Lower Risk of All-cause Mortality in Inflammatory Bowel Disease
In this study, adherence to five key lifestyle factors is associated with lower mortality in patients with inflammatory bowel disease.
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Gut Microbial Alterations Linked to Persistent Fatigue in Patients with IBD
"Multi-omic" profiling of patients with quiescent inflammatory bowel disease demonstrated several key mechanisms associated with fatigue in this population.
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Global Rise of IBD Should Prompt Changes in Care
Trends in the epidemiology of inflammatory bowel disease will require a two-pronged strategy of modulating environmental risk factors and improving delivery of health care to newly industrialized countries.
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Emergency Department Visits, Hospitalizations Increase for IBD Patients
Across multiple treatment settings in the U.S., trends in the delivery of care for patients with inflammatory bowel disease changed between 2005 and 2016.
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Review: Influence of Environmental Factors in Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Environmental factors at both the individual and population levels influence the development and outcomes of inflammatory bowel disease.
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Electronic Health Records Can Be Used to Validate Genetic Determinants of Treatment Response in IBD
For patients with inflammatory bowel disease, narrative text in electronic health records was successfully used to validate associations between genetic risk scores and response to tumor necrosis factor inhibitors—a potential boon to identifying biomarkers of response to different drug classes.
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CT Identifies Which Patients Hospitalized for Ulcerative Colitis Need Rescue Therapy
In patients with acute severe ulcerative colitis, mural stratification seen on multidetector computed tomography predicts poor response to intravenous steroids and the need for inpatient medical or surgical rescue therapy.
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Dual Immunosuppression Linked to Better Outcomes in Complicated Crohn's Disease
In a prospective multicenter cohort, combination therapy with a TNF inhibitor and an immunomodulator was associated with decreased rates of hospitalization, surgery and other adverse outcomes in patients with complicated Crohn's disease.
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Review: New Imaging Modalities Assist in the Management of IBD
Referral for computed tomography enterography, magnetic resonance enterography or contrast ultrasonography can assist with the diagnosis and monitoring of ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease.
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Is Accelerated Infliximab Induction Beneficial for Severe Ulcerative Colitis?
While short-interval administration of infliximab was equally efficacious as standard administration for severe ulcerative colitis, a multicenter retrospective study has shown that a higher dose upon initiation reduced the risk of colectomy.
Digestive Healthcare at Mass General
The Massachusetts General Hospital Digestive Healthcare Center is a collaborative practice of gastroenterologists, endoscopists, surgeons, radiologists, pathologists, hepatologists, oncologists and radiation oncologists dedicated to the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and management of digestive diseases.