Demyelinating brain lesions in a Crohn’s patient under adalimumab

• Autor(a) principal: Nunes,Ana
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Outros Autores: Vieira,Ana, Freitas,João
• Tipo de documento: Relatório
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0872-81782013000200007
• topic: Demyelination; Crohn’s disease; Adalimumab

Demyelinating conditions of the central nervous system can be associated with inflammatory bowel disease, but since the introduction of tumour necrosis factor antagonista therapies, a number of cases of demyelinating disease associated with the treatment are being described. We report the case of a 36-year-old female, with Crohn’s disease, treated with adalimumab for eighteen months. She developed severe headache and the investigations disclosed several demyelinating lesions in the sub cortical white-matter of the frontal and parietal lobes. The suspension of adalimumab resulted in symptomatic relief in a few weeks, but the brain lesions persisted after eight months of follow-up. The cause of these lesions in inflammatory bowel disease patients treated with tumour necrosis factor antagonists is not yet clearly established, but a raised awareness to this possibility is important, as an early change of treatment is recommended.