The major phenotypes of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) include ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease (CD), which cause debilitating symptoms, including bloody diarrhea, abdominal discomfort, and fever. Patients require life-long immunosuppressive medications, which cause adverse side effects as additional morbidity factors. However, IBD is initiated and perpetuated by inflammatory cytokines, and given that in patients with IBD myeloid lineage leukocytes are elevated with activation behavior and release inflammatory cytokines, selective depletion of elevated granulocytes and monocytes by granulomonocytapheresis is a relevant therapeutic option for IBD patients.
Therefore, a column filled with specially designed beads as granulomonocytapheresis carriers for selective adsorption of myeloid lineage leukocytes (Adacolumn) has been applied to treat patients with active IBD.
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