The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Treatment of Crohn's Disease with 6-Mercaptopurine: A Long-Term, Randomized, Double-Blind Study
Abstract
To test the effectiveness of 6-mercaptopurine (6-MP) in the treatment of Crohn's disease, we entered 83 chronically ill patients into a two-year double-blind study comparing 6-MP with placebo. Crossover data showed that improvement occurred in 26 of 39 courses of 6-MP (67%) as compared with three of 39 courses of placebo (8%) (P less than 0.001). Non-crossover data likewise confirmed the superiority of 6-MP. The drug was more effective than placebo in closing fistulas (31 vs 6%) and in permitting discontinuation or reduction of steroid dosage (75 vs. 36%) (P less than 0.001). The onset of response to 6-MP was often delayed, with 32% of patients taking longer than three months to respond, and 19% taking longer than four months. Adverse side effects to 6-MP occurred in 10% of patients and were uniformly reversible. We conclude that 6-MP is an effective and useful agent in the management of Crohn's disease.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cited by
Infliximab for the Treatment of Fistulas in Patients with Crohn's Disease
Present, D. H., Rutgeerts, P., Targan, S., Hanauer, S. B., Mayer, L., van Hogezand, R. A., Podolsky, D. K., Sands, B. E., Braakman, T., DeWoody, K. L., et al. (1999) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejm199905063401804 · Cited by 2,752
Self-citationECCO guidelines on therapeutics in Crohn's disease: medical treatment
Torres, J., Bonovas, S., Doherty, G., Kucharzik, T., Gisbert, J. P., Raine, T., Adamina, M., Armuzzi, A., Bachmann, O., Bager, P., et al. (2020) · Journal of Crohn's and Colitis · doi:10.1093/ecco-jcc/jjz180 · Cited by 1,374
Tiede, I., Fritz, G., Strand, S., Poppe, D., Dvorsky, R., Strand, D., Lehr, H. A., Wirtz, S., Becker, C., Atreya, R., et al. (2003) · Journal of Clinical Investigation · doi:10.1172/jci16432 · Cited by 828
Lichtenstein, G. R., Abreu, M. T., Cohen, R., & Tremaine, W. (2006) · Gastroenterology · doi:10.1053/j.gastro.2006.01.048 · Cited by 417
An Evidence-Based Systematic Review on Medical Therapies for Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Talley, N. J., Abreu, M. T., Achkar, J.-P., Bernstein, C. N., Dubinsky, M. C., Hanauer, S. B., Kane, S. V., Sandborn, W. J., Ullman, T. A., & Moayyedi, P. (2011) · American Journal of Gastroenterology · doi:10.1038/ajg.2011.58 · Cited by 310
Metadata
- Authors
- Present, D. H., Korelitz, B. I., Wisch, N., Glass, J. L., Sachar, D. B., & Pasternack, B. S.
- Venue
- New England Journal of Medicine
- Publisher
- Massachusetts Medical Society
- Published
- 1980-05
- Volume
- 302
- Issue
- 18
- Pages
- 981-987
- ISSN
- 0028-4793 (ISSN-L)
- 1533-4406
- OpenAlex
- W2314055620
- Cited by
- 1,042
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 12.30
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Treatment of Crohn's Disease with 6-Mercaptopurine: A Long-Term, Randomized, Double-Blind Study. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1056/nejm198005013021801
- The paper
- Present, D. H., Korelitz, B. I., Wisch, N., Glass, J. L., Sachar, D. B., & Pasternack, B. S. (1980). Treatment of Crohn's Disease with 6-Mercaptopurine: A Long-Term, Randomized, Double-Blind Study. New England Journal of Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1056/nejm198005013021801
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
