Objective:
To present the mesalamine-induced acute exacerbation of symptoms and inflammatory markers in children with Crohn's disease (CD).
Clinical presentation and intervention:
Three children who presented with CD had acute exacerbation of colitis symptoms or elevated inflammatory markers when mesalamine was added to treatment while tapering/ceasing steroid treatment. While on steroid treatment, the patients maintained clinical and laboratory remission, but with the initiation of mesalamine treatment, they had abdominal pain and bloody mucoid diarrhoea and/or elevation of white blood cell count, C-reactive protein level and erythrocyte sedimentation rate. Bacterial pathogens were excluded from the urine, throat and blood cultures, parasites with stool examination, viral pathogens with serology. Within 3-7 days after the mesalamine treatment had been stopped, the patients showed improvement of colitis symptoms and normalisation of white blood cell count, C-reactive protein level and erythrocyte sedimentation rate.
Conclusion:
In this study mesalamine mimicked CD relapse in children with CD while tapering or after stopping steroid treatment. Awareness of this side effect of mesalamine could prevent a misdiagnosis of steroid dependency.