Review of stem cells as promising therapy for perianal disease in inflammatory bowel disease

Those patients with perianal Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis experience a difficult to treat disease process with a delayed state and often inability to heal despite current therapies. The approaches currently used to treat these patients with corticosteroids, antibiotics, immunomodulators, anti-tumor necrosis factor-α drug, and surgical repair are limited in their healing ability. This review presents all current literature since emergence in the early 2000s of stem cell therapy for patients with perianal inflammatory bowel disease and analyzes the efficacy, outcomes and safety within these studies.