Not everyone wants to take medication regularly. For some people, the habit reminds them that they have a chronic illness; for others, it can be inconvenient.
If either reason sounds familiar, you might be tempted to cut back on, skip, or even stop taking your meds for Crohn’s disease, and this could be dangerous to your health.
Overall, anywhere from 53 to 75 percent of people who take medication for an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), such as Crohn’s, don’t stick to their treatment plan, according to one review of randomized controlled trials.
But no matter how well you’re feeling, it’s important to stay the course. Here, find out what can happen if you opt to forgo your treatment regimen.
What to Know if You Want to Stop Taking Your Crohn’s Medication
“Stopping medications for Crohn’s disease can result in complications,” including a flare, says Ellen Gutkin, DO, a gastroenterologist at NewYork-Presbyterian Queens in New York City.
One small study of 207 people with Crohn’s found that 36 percent of people who stopped taking a biologic medication relapsed within two years.
And if you stop taking your medication, it may be somewhat less effective at staving off IBD symptoms if you start it up again. There’s also a chance you could develop antibodies to the medication, or have a hypersensitivity reaction to it when you restart it.
And once you start taking the medication again, you may not see results for a while. It can take some time to notice the benefits of just about any drug, but certain immunomodulators can be particularly slow to take effect again, says Dr. Gutkin. For example, several frequently prescribed immunomodulator medications for Crohn’s disease can take months to produce results.
If you relapse, you may also experience progressive bowel damage and need to have surgery before restarting medication, according to a research review.
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