ADVERTISEMENT
Certain Respiratory Diseases More Common in Patients with IBD
Patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) appear to have higher rates of pulmonary vasculitis, interstitial pneumonia, and other respiratory diseases compared with age- and sex-matched patients without IBD, according to study results from a population-based cohort study published online ahead of print in Digestive Diseases and Sciences.
“Prior reports from small studies suggested an increased prevalence of respiratory diseases in patients with IBD,” wrote lead author Gayatri Pemmasani, MD, SUNY Upstate Medical Center, and coauthors in the study background. “Large population-based contemporary studies evaluating this association are lacking.”
To fill the gap, researchers conducted a retrospective observational study encompassing more than 175,000 patients from the US Nationwide Readmissions Database year 2014. Half were diagnosed with IBD, and half were age- and sex-matched controls without IBD.
Patients with IBD, the study showed, had a 52% higher rate of pulmonary vasculitis and interstitial pneumonia, 46% higher rate of bronchiectasis, 35% higher risk for lung nodules, 16% higher rate of pulmonary fibrosis, and a 5.5% higher rate of asthma compared with patients without IBD.
When researchers looked exclusively at patients with IBD, they found significant differences between patients with Crohn’s disease and patients with ulcerative colitis. In particular, patients with Crohn’s disease had an almost a 30% higher risk for chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases compared with patients with ulcerative colitis. However, patients with Crohn’s disease had a 34% lower age/sex-adjusted risk for bronchiectasis, 56% lower risk for pulmonary vasculitis, and 14% lower risk for pleural diseases than those with ulcerative colitis, according to the study.
—Jolynn Tumolo
Reference:
Pemmasani G, Loftus EV, Tremaine WJ. Prevalence of pulmonary diseases in association with inflammatory bowel disease. Dig Dis Sci. Published online ahead of print, February 10, 2022.
