Space drink may help kids with Crohn's

TEL AVIV, Israel, June 17 (UPI) -- An Israeli researcher says a nutrient cocktail helps put 60 percent of children with Crohn's disease into remission.

Dr. Raanan Shamir of Tel Aviv University's Sackler School of Medicine says this success rate is similar to that obtained using steroid-based drugs -- the traditional treatment for this inflammatory bowel disease -- but without the side effect of slowing growth.

Shamir realized the problem of supplying daily nutrients had been already solved for astronauts.

"Prepared powder, with liquids, gives you all the nutritional requirements you need for the day," Shamir says in a statement. "We don't know why these formulas work, and nobody has shown that any one formula is preferable to another. People have to be committed and eat nothing else during the period of time they are on nutrition therapy, and it is difficult to do -- but if they do it, they go into remission."

Maintaining remission may require receiving 25 percent-50 percent of caloric intake by nutrition therapy -- sometimes for years, Shamir says. Children experiencing the treatment need the support of physicians, dietitians, psychologists and their families, the study says.

"The acceptance of this is difficult," Shamir says. "You have to persuade the family. Not all physicians know it works, and it's much easier to give someone a prescription than try to work with the child."

The findings are reported in the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition.