ArticleJournal of Crohn's & colitis2018
The Effect of Low-Dose Naltrexone on Medication in Inflammatory Bowel Disease: A Quasi Experimental Before-and-After Prescription Database Study.
Article in Journal of Crohn's & colitis, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 21 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 27 citations in OpenAlex.
- European guideline on obesity care in patients with gastrointestinal and liver diseases - Joint European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism / United European Gastroenterology guideline.United European gastroenterology journal · 2022Guideline
- Serious adverse events reported in placebo randomised controlled trials of oral naltrexone: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC medicine · 2019Pooled it
- Low-Dose Naltrexone in Crohn's Disease: A Prematurely Terminated Randomized Trial Showing Reduced Fatigue Without Clinical or Endoscopic Benefit.Digestive diseases and sciences · 2026Article
- Review
- Real-World Effectiveness and Tolerability of Low Dose Naltrexone to Treat Chronic Pain: A Retrospective Cohort Study of One Pain Physician's Practice.Journal of pain research · 2025Article
- Low-dose naltrexone's utility for non-cancer centralized pain conditions: a scoping review.Pain medicine (Malden, Mass.) · 2023Article
- Obesity and novel management of inflammatory bowel disease.World journal of gastroenterology · 2023Review
- Safety and efficacy of low dose naltrexone in a long covid cohort; an interventional pre-post study.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2022Article
- Article
- Emerging Comorbidities in Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Eating Disorders, Alcohol and Narcotics Misuse.Journal of clinical medicine · 2021Review
- No change in the consumption of thyroid hormones after starting low dose naltrexone (LDN): a quasi-experimental before-after study.BMC endocrine disorders · 2020Article
- Role of the δ-Opioid Receptor in 2 Murine Models of Colitis.Comparative medicine · 2020Article
- Low-dose naltrexone as a treatment for chronic fatigue syndrome.BMJ case reports · 2020Article
- Cannabinoids and Opioids in the Treatment of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases.Clinical and translational gastroenterology · 2020Review
- Changes in the consumption of antiepileptics and psychotropic medicines after starting low dose naltrexone: A nation-wide register-based controlled before-after study.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Experimental Colitis Enhances the Rate of Antinociceptive Tolerance to Morphine via Peripheral Opioid Receptors.The Journal of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics · 2019Article
- Article
- Article
- Intermittent blockade of OGFr and treatment of autoimmune disorders.Experimental biology and medicine (Maywood, N.J.) · 2018Review
- Low-Dose Naltrexone (LDN)-Review of Therapeutic Utilization.Medical sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2018Review
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND
aimsLow-dose naltrexone [LDN] is a controversial off-label treatment used by many Crohn's disease [CD] and ulcerative colitis [UC] patients. A small number of preliminary studies indicate that LDN might be beneficial in CD, but evidence is too scarce to demonstrate efficacy. We sought to examine whether initiation of LDN therapy by patients with inflammatory bowel disease [IBD] was followed by changes in dispensing of relevant medication.
methodsWe performed a quasi-experimental before-and-after study following a sudden increase in LDN use in the Norwegian population in 2013. IBD patients were identified from among all the patients who had at least one LDN prescription recorded in the Norwegian Prescription Database [NorPD] in 2013. Drug dispensing 2 years before and after the first LDN prescription was compared.
resultsWe identified 582 IBD patients who had received LDN. Of the 256 patients who became persistent LDN users, there were reductions in the number of users for [i] all examined drugs [-12%], [ii] intestinal anti-inflammatory agents [-17%], [iii] other immunosuppressants [-29%], [iv] intestinal corticosteroids [-32%] and [v] aminosalicylates [-17%]. In subgroups of identified CD and UC patients, there were significant reductions in the number of users of intestinal corticosteroids [CD: -44%, UC: -53%] and systemic corticosteroids [UC: -24%]. No significant differences in cumulative defined daily doses were observed.
conclusionsOur findings imply that the initiation of LDN in IBD is followed by reduced dispensing of several drugs considered essential in the treatment of CD and UC.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.