1. Recinto Universitario <br />Cayey Puerto Rico<br />Concentrating Asacol for the improved treatment of Crohn’s Disease<br />Gustavo Perez Caballero<br />Prof. Edwin Vazquez<br />Abstract:<br />The purpose of this investigation is fully linked to concentration of a drug to make this still un-curable disease less affecting to the people with this disease. First I believe I should explain what is Crohn’s which is a form of inflammatory bowel disease that usually affects the intestines, but may occur anywhere from the mouth to the end of the rectum. Still the exact cause of Crohn’s disease is unknown but the condition appears to be linked to a problem with the body's immune system response. Normally, the immune system helps protect the body, but with Crohn’s disease the immune system can't tell the difference between normal body tissue and foreign substances. The result is an overactive immune response that leads to chronic inflammation and a lot of rectal bleeding. This is very emmbarasing and painful to people with the disease. Asacol is an anti-inflammatory drug used to treat inflammation of the digestive tract ulcerative colitis and mild-to-moderate Crohn's disease. Asacol is a bowel-specific aminosalicylate drug that acts locally in the gut and has its predominant actions there, thereby having few systemic side effects. Now then what I hypothesize is that we can concentrate the pill to make it more effective and save people money. I will use mice for this experiment and later on I will test it on humans. <br />Introduction:<br />Well we’ve covered a little bit over this investigation but we really still do not understand fully what Crohn’s is about. An article which I found very interesting and summarizes this disease very well is found in the website medicine.net from the year 1996. As I said before my hypothesis is that one concentrated asacol pill will be enough to repress Crohn’s for 2 to 3 days. Currently a person has to take 6 pills daily for it to be effective. Also many insurance companies don’t cover the pill so people with this disease must pay the hefty amount of sevenhundred to eight hundred dollars every 4 weeks. This is why I want to do this investigation to help, in every aspect the people with this disease.<br />Necessary Materials and Methodology:<br /> I will have my control group and my experimental group, control being 5 sets of 5 mice taking the normal Asacol treatment and my experimental group being 5 sets of 5 mice with the more concentrated type of Asacol. I will observe them over a period of time to watch for any side-effects and see if there are any effects on offspring. The mouse musmusculus will be used because of the similarity between this type of mouse and humans. If there appears to be completely safe in genes and other intestines then I will move on to test it on willing humans with the disease.<br />Results and Discussion:<br />After numerous observations I expect that the mice in the concentrated Asacol group show more improvement in rectal bleeding and stool frequency than in the normal treatment. I also expect that it wont damage the offspring in anyway so that I can test it on willing humans with the disease.<br />As we can see by this hypothetical graph we see a great difference in improvement in rectal bleeding after more time on the drug. <br />References:<br />1. http://www.drugs.com/asacol.html Asacom,07/27/2010, Cerner Multum, Inc. ('Multum’)<br />2. http://www.medicinenet.com/crohns_disease/article.htm Jay W. Marks, MD, Crohn's Disease, 12 Jul 1996<br />3. http://www.webmd.com/ibd-crohns-disease/crohns-disease/tc/crohns-disease-treatment-overview2005-2011, WebMD, Healthwise<br />4. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001295/ George F Longstreth, MD, Department of Gastroenterology, 12/13/2010, A.D.A.M., Inc.<br />