assigned to one of the two diets, following it for 12 weeks. The participants received prepared food for the first six weeks.
The diets affected their symptoms, and at 12 weeks about 42.4 percent had symptomatic remission with SCD and 40.2 percent with the Mediterranean diet, according to the report.
The SCD includes unprocessed meats, fresh fruits and non-starchy vegetables. It restricts certain legumes, all grains, certain sweeteners, canned fruits and vegetables, and certain dairy products. The Mediterranean diet is low in red and processed meats and features fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts, fish, lean meats, whole grains, small amounts of dairy and uses olive oil as its primary source of fat.
Diet isn’t the only line of defense against Crohn’s disease. For more than 20 years, since the first biologic medication was approved, there has been a blossoming of different medical therapies, Swaminath adds. Prior to that, existing medications including steroids and immune modulators were repurposed to treat the disease.
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“While admittedly, we haven’t cured everybody or gotten everyone into a medicine-induced remission, we can help most people get to essentially a normal quality of life,” Swaminath says.
Still, some people want an alternative to immunosuppressive therapy, according to the study, and high-quality data on diets for Crohn’s disease is lacking.
Swaminath shares that the people who were included in the study had mild to moderate disease. If someone is really sick and already malnourished, most physicians would not put them into a diet strategy, he adds.
“What that means is, despite being on therapy, clearly they’re on the therapy because it’s working and they were better than they were before, but they still have symptoms that weren’t cured,” Swaminath says. “And if we can get half of those patients better by changing their diet or adopting one of these strategies, that really, I think, is valuable.”
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