Why My Elevated Liver Enzymes Worried my Gastroenterologist

Did you know a common sign of PSC is losing response to the IBD medications you try?

Since my ulcerative colitis diagnosis in 2014, I’ve tried countless medications, including prednisone, 5-ASAs (like mesalamine, sulfasalazine, and Apriso), enemas, biologics, and more, and none of them brought me relief for more than a few months.

Pile of multi-colored pills on orange background

I Failed Remicade (Without Developing Antibodies)

I was on Remicade for about a year and a half, but it slowly stopped working (even after increasing my dosage and frequency.) The odd thing is that I never developed antibodies for Remicade.

I didn’t find out until later that this unresponsiveness to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) medications can be a sign of PSC. This is a sign you might have PSC.

Discovering My Elevated Liver Numbers

On top of this, my gastroenterologist noticed that I had elevated liver numbers around September 2017. They weren’t extremely high, but they were more elevated than they should have been.

My GI, Dr. Yinka Davies, is a PSC specialist, so she recognized the red flags of my elevated liver numbers and unresponsiveness to medications. She immediately ordered lots of non-invasive tests to find out what was causing the high liver enzymes.

Read the next post to learn about these three tests and their results.