Can colon melanosis be cured?

Melanosis is not unfamiliar to some people. It is also a common clinical disease. There are many types of melanosis, and coli melanosis is one of them. This type of melanosis is generally more common in middle-aged and elderly people, and men are more likely to suffer from coli melanosis. More people are concerned about the impact of coli melanosis on the body. So can melanosis coli be cured?

1. Melanosis coli

Melanosis coli is a non-inflammatory bowel disease characterized by melanin deposition in the colonic mucosa. Its essence is that the macrophages in the lamina propria of the colonic mucosa contain a large amount of lipofuscin. Males are more likely to be affected than females, and the age of onset is usually over 60 years old. The main symptoms include abdominal distension, constipation and difficulty in defecation. A small number of patients have lower abdominal pain and poor appetite.

2. There is currently no effective drug treatment

Most scholars believe that MC is a benign, reversible, non-inflammatory intestinal mucosal lesion. With the improvement of constipation symptoms and the discontinuation of laxatives, a large amount of lipofuscin is digested and decomposed by lysosomes, and the pigmentation of MC can be reduced or even disappear. Therefore, it is recommended to eat more vegetables, fruits and fiber-rich foods, drink more water and exercise more to reduce constipation or difficulty in defecation, develop good bowel habits, stop using or do not use laxatives containing pigments and use oily laxatives instead, and use gastrointestinal motility drugs and proecological preparations and other medications to relieve constipation when necessary, which can reduce the incidence of MC and reverse existing lesions. Some possible causes of melanosis, such as rectocele and rectal intussusception, should be treated, such as rectocele repair and internal sleeve fixation. For patients who have been diagnosed with MC, regular follow-up colonoscopy is required to promptly detect associated colon polyps, adenomas, and colon cancers, and perform high-frequency electroresection or surgical eradication treatment under endoscopy at an early stage. However, for patients with this disease who have no history of taking laxatives, the treatment method needs further exploration.

3. Note

After various laxatives enter the large intestine, they can cause transient, dose-related apoptosis of colon mucosal epithelial cells. The resulting apoptotic bodies are phagocytosed by mononuclear macrophages and migrate through pores in the basement membrane to the lamina propria of the mucosa. In the lysosomes of the macrophages, the apoptotic bodies are converted into typical lipofuscin or other pigments. With the long-term use of laxatives, these pigmented macrophages continue to aggregate and eventually develop into typical MC changes. Due to the large accumulation of lipofuscin particles in macrophages, severe cases lead to cell disintegration.