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And this machine removes certain of these inflammatory cytokines like TNF and something called interleukin-6. It also removes certain white blood cells which we think are bad actors. And then the blood is filtered back through the patient through another intravenous line. The preliminary studies from Japan were promising, and studies are underway now in the United States.

BETTINA GREGORY, MD: Well, Dr. Loftus, clearly there's a great deal of research being conducted in IBD. How important is it that people participate in this research by taking part in clinical trials?

EDWARD V. LOFTUS, MD: Well, it's critically important. The only way to find out if one of these new treatments works is to subject it to rigorous scientific analysis. And this entails, usually, a process called the randomized clinical trial in which patients and physicians don't know if the patient's receiving the real treatment or a fake treatment called the placebo. For any of these new treatments to be approved by the US Food & Drug Administration, these treatments need to be subjected to randomized clinical trials which show benefit. So patients absolutely need to enroll in these clinical trials.

BETTINA GREGORY, MD: Well, as you know, we've been soliciting e-mail questions on the CCFA website. We found that more than a third of the questions that have come in have to do with alternative therapies.

Dr. Scherl, let me ask you the question. Why is there such a high level of interest in these alternative therapies and could you run down some of them for us?

ELLEN SCHERL, MD: Well, you heard, Bettina, that basically we're talking about one-third of patients who don't respond to the routine medications that we have. And there's reason to believe that even with the newer medications that number will stay the same. So what I say is that inflammatory bowel disease is a disease of shadows. Patients don't always talk about their disease and they certainly don't always tell their physicians whether they are seeking out alternative therapies.

There are two alternative therapies that you've heard about, which is flax seed oil and fish oil. Which aim to stabilize the membrane of these white blood cells or inflammatory cells. The Gottschall Diet is a high-carbohydrate diet; also an attempt to decrease inflammation through nutrition.

But researchers are really predicting that probiotics are revolutionizing the treatment for inflammatory bowel disease. And you've heard a lot about how we think that there's a bacterial trigger that sets up the immune cells to be over-regulated and pour out these inflammatory cytokines and proteins. So one mechanism would be to take the bacteria that are triggering this up-regulated immune response out of the system and probiotics do just that.

Probiotics are basically bacteria that cause life in other bacteria. And we hope that they generate good bacteria that turn off the immune system.

BETTINA GREGORY, MD: Thank you, Dr. Scherl, Dr. Loftus, Dr. Plevy and Dr. Reiner. Thank you for your insights and sharing the information on the latest developments in IBD and its medical treatment. And we thank you for joining us. I'm Bettina Gregory.

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