Historically, the main target of therapy in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has been to achieve and maintain clinical remission. By achieving this goal, we had hoped improve our patients' health-related quality life (QoL) avoid disease-related complications including hospitalizations surgeries. However, while patients value functional improvement that occurs with remission, targeting remission...

ed for patient characteristics. The median age of the patients, 36 men and 40 women, was 42 yr with the range of 19 to 76 yr. All CD patients had been followed up for several years. None of the patients had received antimycobacterial therapy. The blood samples were collected and sera were separated and stored at –70°C. Determination of serum values was performed by individuals blinded to the cl...