Enteral nutrition improves health-related quality of life in Crohn's disease patients with long disease duration.
OBJECTIVE
Although enteral nutrition therapy has been highlighted as maintenance therapy for Crohn's disease, few reports have investigated the impact of enteral nutrition on the health-related quality of life of Crohn's disease patients.


METHODS
We cross-sectionally evaluated the effect of multiple clinical factors including enteral nutrition on the health-related quality of life of Crohn's disease patients focusing on patient disease duration using the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Questionnaire.


RESULTS
Of all 126 patients examined, 95 patients were receiving enteral nutrition. Multiple linear regression analysis using 18 clinical parameters revealed that disease activity was a dominant factor that affected the health-related quality of life of Crohn's disease patients, and that enteral nutrition was also an independent factor that improved the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Questionnaire total score, bowel symptoms, and systemic symptoms for patients with a disease duration of 10 years or more (P = 0.0090, 0.0033, and 0.016, respectively).


CONCLUSIONS
Enteral nutrition improved the health-related quality of life of Crohn's disease patients with long-term disease duration. Thus, enteral nutrition should be recommended as one of the options for maintenance therapy for Crohn's disease.
Kuriyama
Motoaki
M
Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Okayama University Graduate School of Medicine Dentistry, and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Okayama, Japan.
Kato
Jun
J
Morimoto
Naofumi
N
Fujimoto
Tsuyoshi
T
Kono
Hiroyuki
H
Okano
Nobuaki
N
Miyaike
Jiro
J
Morita
Takechiyo
T
Okada
Hiroyuki
H
Suzuki
Seiyuu
S
Yoshioka
Toshifumi
T
Shiode
Junji
J
Shiratori
Yasushi
Y
Kazuhide
Yamamoto
Y
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003424:Crohn Disease / Q000178:diet therapy*; D004750:Enteral Nutrition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016014:Linear Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011788:Quality of Life; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D013997:Time Factors; D016896:Treatment Outcome