Individualized treatment
The authors noted that the strength of recommendations varies with the often-modest availability of randomized controlled trial data on treatment efficacy.
For example, they recommended that systemic steroids be considered to induce remission but only conditionally recommend topical steroids. They conditionally recommend consideration of empiric elimination diets and conditionally recommend against using food allergy testing to guide diet.
The choice of treatment should be individualized on the basis of the affected GI segment, severity of the disease, patient characteristics, and family resources and capabilities, the authors wrote.
“We’ve provided guidance on how to care for patients based on the consensus of experts who have the necessary experience and knowledge base,” Dr. Furuta said. “Our ability to say: ‘Here are the established treatments,’ is lacking, though. We need research studies to verify that our recommended approaches are indeed correct.”
The authors conditionally recommended that treatment goals include achieving symptom resolution, improving gross endoscopic and histologic abnormalities, promoting normal childhood growth and development, and preventing disease complications.
No pediatric study has determined the natural history of non-EoE EGIDs, and no study of maintenance therapy has been conducted, the authors noted.
For this reason, they conditionally recommended that the clinical decision to continue therapy should be discussed with patients and their parents/caregivers, and those discussions include the benefits and risk of long-term treatment, its cost, and its impact on health-related quality of life.
A starting point for patient management
In a comment, Vincent Mukkada, MD, professor of pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati and an attending physician in gastroenterology, hepatology, and nutrition at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and Medical Center, observed that, though improved awareness among pediatric gastroenterologists may account for some of the increase in GI eosinophil disease, the incidence is also likely growing.
“We’re looking for them much more,” said Dr. Mukkada.
“But I also think they’re increasing, just like all other atopic diseases. We’re not sure why,” he added.
“The hope is that these guidelines will allow nonsubspecialized gastroenterologists and allergists feel comfortable to at least start on the journey of managing these patients. And, for pediatricians who learn that their patient has received a non-EoE EGID diagnosis, they can go to the summary figures in this one document and very quickly get an overview of the disease and its course,” Dr. Mukkada said.
Guideline development was funded by the North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition and the European Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition. The authors and Dr. Mukkada reported no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.