FRIDAY, Sept. 9 (HealthDay News) -- Patients with inflammatory bowel disease, such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, are more likely than other patients to develop multiple sclerosis, asthma, arthritis and other diseases, according to two studies in the September issue of Gastroenterology.
Gauree Gupta, of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and colleagues looked at 7,988 patients with Crohn's disease, 12,185 ulcerative colitis patients and 80,666 controls using data from the General Practice Research Database. Their retrospective cohort study indicated that patients with ulcerative colitis had 2.63 times the risk of developing multiple sclerosis, demyelination, and/or optic neuritis (MS/D/ON) than controls. Likewise, in a retrospective cross-sectional study, the risk of MS/D/ON was elevated in patients with Crohn's disease (odds ratio, 1.54) and ulcerative colitis (1.75).
In the second study, Charles N. Bernstein of the University of Manitoba looked at the University of Manitoba IBD database, which included 3,879 cases of ulcerative colitis and 4,193 cases of Crohn's disease. Patients with ulcerative colitis were 50%-70% more likely to have asthma than population-based controls, and patients with Crohn's disease were 30%-40% more likely to have asthma.
"Both ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease patients had a significantly greater likelihood of having arthritis, asthma, bronchitis, psoriasis, and pericarditis than population controls," Bernstein's team writes. "An increased risk for chronic renal disease and multiple sclerosis was noted in ulcerative colitis but not Crohn's disease patients."
The studies "underline the propensity of our patients with IBD for developing autoimmune disorders affecting multiple organ systems," Edward Loftus, Jr., of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., writes in an editorial.
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