STUDENT: Jessica Simchak

PROJECT ADVISOR: Michael M. Evans

ABSTRACT

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a term used to define two conditions: Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis. These illnesses cause severe inflammation of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. IBD comes with many negative symptoms such as pain, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, anemia, etc. The main course of treatment for IBD is pharmacotherapy for symptom management with the goal of remission. Research has shown that pharmaceutical treatment used in IBD can cause patients to experience adverse effects in the body systems. The purpose of this literature review is to synthesize relevant literature related to the topic of treatments of IBD and the adverse effects associated with pharmaceutical therapy versus non-pharmacologic/complementary alternative medicine (CAM) treatments. The keywords used to retrieve information from the research databases includes: IBD, CAM treatment, Non-pharmacological treatment, IBD patients, adverse effects, remission, QOL, and pharmaceutical treatment. Over 200 articles were retrieved during this research process. The articles found to be most suitable for this literature review were cohort studies, randomized controlled studies, and systematic reviews. Non-pharmacologic/CAM treatments have proven effective in treating IBD by managing patient’s symptoms and putting them into a remission without negatively affecting the body systems. With a non-pharmacologic approach/CAM therapy IBD patients can control their disease without the negative effects of medications.