How to Shorten a Flare-Up of Crohn’s Disease

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On May 16, 2025

A Crohn’s flare occurs when a dysfunctional immune response causes inflammation in your digestive system and elsewhere in your body.

Treatment can consist of short-term therapies for use during flares as well as long-term maintenance therapy. Treatment during a flare aims to relieve symptoms and bring about remission, or the end of the flare.

Anti-Inflammatory Drugs for Short-Term Use

During a flare, short-term use of anti-inflammatory drugs, such as steroids, can help improve symptoms by reducing inflammation. Your doctor may prescribe them alongside other drugs.

Corticosteroids Prednisone (Deltasone) and budesonide (Entocort EC) can relieve symptoms and bring about remission. But long-term steroid use can have severe adverse effects, so doctors generally recommend using them for short periods as a bridge to other therapies.

Pain-Relieving Medication

Pain-relieving medications won’t shorten a Crohn’s flare, but they can decrease discomfort while you wait for other drugs to work. These include:

Antispasmodics, such as dicyclomine (Bentyl), which reduce cramps
Acetaminophen, such as Tylenol, which relieves pain

Doctors may sometimes prescribe opioids for severe abdominal pain with IBD, but they can have many adverse effects, including digestive upset and a risk of dependence.

Opioids may also worsen IBD outcomes, so be sure to discuss their pros and cons with your doctor before using them.

Biologics and Other Long-Term Treatments

Long-term drugs, also called maintenance therapy, change how the immune system works. Biologics, which stop certain proteins in the body from causing inflammation, are antibody-based drugs made from substances that occur naturally.

Nonbiologics, which target the body’s immune response, are drugs created from synthetic substances, such as anti-inflammatories and immunosuppressive medications.

Both classes of drugs can reduce the risk of Crohn’s flares and the severity of symptoms, bring about remission during a flare, and help maintain remission for extended periods.

It’s important for your doctor to monitor your use of these drugs, as suppressing the immune system can have adverse effects, such as a higher risk of infections.

The following are some options.

Anti-TNF agents such as infliximab (Remicade) and adalimumab (Humira) can shorten a flare. These biologic drugs dampen the immune response by targeting specific molecules and blocking the action of a protein known as tumor necrosis factor, which causes inflammation.
IL-12/23 and IL-23 inhibitors such as ustekinumab (Stelara) and risankizumab (Skyrizi), respectively, are also biologic drugs. They reduce inflammation by blocking proteins known as interleukins, which play a role in activating the body’s immune response.
Integrin blockers reduce Crohn’s-related inflammation by targeting precise molecules linked to the gut. Vedolizumab (Entyvio), a biologic drug, blocks the production of one type of integrin, a protein that enables inflammation-causing cells to move from the blood into tissues. It can also act as a maintenance drug between flares.
JAK inhibitors, which are nonbiologic synthetic small molecule drugs, may relieve symptoms more quickly than other nonsteroid drugs. They reduce inflammation by blocking substances that lead to a faulty immune response, and they can also prevent recurrent flares.
In clinical trials, 58.8 percent felt symptom relief after two weeks.
Upadacitinib (Rinvoq) was the first JAK inhibitor to get approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for treating Crohn’s.
Immunomodulators such as methotrexate (Trexall) and azathioprine (Imuran) are nonbiologic drugs that reduce inflammation by changing how the immune system works. But it can take 8 to 12 weeks to see an improvement after you start immunomodulators, so they’re not typically used alone for treating acute flares.

Will My Meds Change During a Flare?

A Crohn’s flare doesn’t necessarily mean your medication regimen has stopped working or that you’ll have to change it, says Sobia Mujtaba, MD, MPH, a gastroenterologist and an assistant professor at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.

“While that is one reason for a flare, [that] a certain medication has lost efficacy, other reasons include infections, or if a medication needs to be optimized,” she says.

Drugs to Avoid

Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) may worsen symptoms in people with Crohn’s, so check with your doctor before using them.

Speak with your doctor before starting or changing any drug or treatment, including over-the-counter drugs, to make sure they won’t worsen your symptoms or interact with other medications.