Inflammatory bowel disease can make life miserable for people who suffer from it. It is inconvenient to the point of adversely affecting the quality of life.

“Because of inflammatory bowel syndrome, for my entire life, wherever I went I had to know where the nearest bathroom was, and make sure I didn’t stray too far from it,” says 16 year old Melissa Feinberg.

Life for 16 year old Melissa Feinberg went from bad to worse because of her early diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease. “The pain came later on,” explains Melissa.
Melissa is one of the 20% of inflammatory bowel disease patients under the age of 19. She had ulcerative colitis.
According to gastroenterologist, Dr. Keith Benkov of Englewood Medical Center, “there are two types of inflammatory bowl disease, one is Crohn’s disease and the other is ulcerative colitis. Ulcerative colitis is very straight forward, because it’s generally pain and bloody diarrhea.”
“I got inflammatory bowel disease when I was pretty young and I feel like I had to mature a lot because I was responsible for keeping myself healthy. I had to go through a lot of trouble to make sure I wouldn’t get sick,” explains Melissa.
“We think something is wrong with the immune system. The immune system is usually the part of the body that fights off infections or fights off things that are invading your body. So in treating IBD we use a combination of anti-inflammatories, or we use drugs that have an effect on the immune system,” explains Dr. Benkov.
New research shows genes involved in removing toxins from the intestines are made inactive in patients with inflammatory bowel disease. One gene, called PXR was strongly reduced in patients like Melissa.
The cells lining the wall are not eliminating these toxic substances that could be causing or contributing to the inflammation which is the current treatment target.
Hopefully, these genes will be the target of treatment of inflammatory bowel disease.
For now, patients of inflammatory bowel disease like Melissa take the anti-inflammatories. Sometimes, and as in her case, they need surgery to remove the diseased colon. For her, it was a life-changing event.
“Life has pretty much done a complete 180 turn around. It’s more fulfilling that I can go out and do things and be a normal teenage girl who is able to have friends and go out with them. These are things I wouldn’t have been able to do before,” says Melissa.

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