Clinical features of microscopic colitis in the elderly and short-term effect of mesalamine on microscopic colitis / 中华老年医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate clinical features of microscopic colitis (MC) in the elderly and short-term effect of mesalamine on MC.Methods Totally 116 elderly patients with MC in our hospital were recruited from January 2011 to December 2011.Clinical manifestations,use of MC related drugs (MCRDs),pathological classifications and short-term effect of mesalazine were collected and analyzed.Results MC patients accounted for 27.6 ％ in elderly patients with chronic diarrhea,who presented with mild to middle watery or mucous stool,and only 1.7％ of MC patients accompanied with severe stomach pain.Collagenous colitis (CC) and lymphocytic enteritis (LC) accounted for 31.9％ and 68.1％,respectively in MC patients and 50％ of them had MCRDs taking history.There was a significant difference in short-term effective rate between CC group and LC group at 4 weeks after mesalazine treatment (64.9％ vs.84.8％,x2 =5.929,P=0.015).The effective rate was significantly related with the relief of pathology in LC group (x2 =5.896,P=0.015).The relapse rate had no significant difference between CC group and LC group at 8 weeks after withdrawal of mesalazine treatment (45.8％ vs.34.3 ％,P =0.317).Conclusions MC may be one of the main reasons leading to chronic diarrhea in the elderly.Mesalazine has a better effect for the short-term treatment of MC in the elderly,but the long-term maintenance therapy still needs further study.