Azathioprine in the treatment of paediatric ulcerative colitis

摘要

Ulcerative colitis (UC) usually starts in childhood when the final growth spurt is expected. The disease threatens normal growth development not only by itself, but, even more, by the frequently unreflected long-term use of growth-suppressing steroids. The latter is probably the main reason for the large number (up to 50%) of paediatric colectomies reported in the literature.The unacceptably large number of side-effects of long-term glucocorticoid therapy led to the search for more suitable systemic anti-inflammatory drugs.