Mucosal healing predicts long-term outcome of maintenance therapy with infliximab in Crohnʼs disease

Infliximab (IFX) treatment induces mucosal healing (MH) in patients with Crohn's disease (CD) but the impact of MH on the long-term outcome of IFX treatment in CD is still debated.

We studied MH during long-term treatment with IFX in 214 CD patients. A total of 183 patients (85.5%) responded to induction therapy and 31 patients (14.5%) were primary nonresponders. They underwent lower gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy within a median of 0.7 months (interquartile range [IQR] 0.1-6.8) prior to first IFX and after a median of 6.7 months (IQR 1.4-24.6) after start of IFX and were further analyzed. The relationship between the outcome of IFX treatment long-term and MH was studied.