Emory University and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta pediatric gastroenterologist Subra Kugathasan, MD, has received a four-year, $5 million grant from the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America to study the progression of Crohn's disease in children. The multi-center study will enroll approximately 1,100 children, all recently diagnosed with Crohn's disease, from more than 20 pediatric centers across North America. The purpose of the study is to identify biomarkers to predict which children with Crohn’s disease are most at risk for developing complications from the disease, a chronic disorder that causes inflammation of the digestive or gastrointestinal tract.
“It is estimated that 15 percent to 20 percent of children with Crohn’s disease will develop complications that may require surgery within the first three years of diagnosis,” says Kugathasan, study principal investigator and professor of pediatrics in the Emory School of Medicine. Kugathasan also practices at the Emory Children’s Center, a joint venture between Emory and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. “We are developing a risk assessment model that will categorize pediatric patients into different risk levels for their likelihood of developing complications,” says Kugathasan.
The Emory may yield results that will allow clinicians to individualize therapy at the time of diagnosis and treat each patient accordingly. “The data gained from children in this study will apply to all patients, regardless of age of diagnosis,” says Kugathasan.
Considerable progress has been made in irritable bowel disease research, but investigators do not yet know what causes Crohn’s disease. It is estimated that more than half a million American adults and children suffer from Crohn's disease, with as many as 100,000 under the age of 18. Most people develop the diseases between the ages of 15 and 35.
August 2009
