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Study Finds Higher-Than-Expected IBD Rates in US Black Women
The burden of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in Black women in the United States appears higher than previously thought, according to results from an epidemiology study published in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases.
“Our preliminary analyses demonstrate that the incidence of IBD in Black women rivals the estimates from cohorts that consist of predominantly White participants,” wrote corresponding author Hamed Khalili, MD, MPH, of Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, and study coauthors.
The investigation included participants from the Black Women’s Health Study, which enrolled 58,973 women at baseline in 1995. In biennial questionnaires, participants self-reported IBD diagnoses. Follow-up questionnaires were sent to a subset of women who self-reported IBD to evaluate the accuracy of the diagnosis and assess disease characteristics.
Participants reported a total 609 cases of IBD through December 2021, according to the study. Among them, 142 were prevalent at baseline, for an IBD prevalence of 0.24%, and 467 were incident, for a crude incident rate of 33.2/100,000 person-years.
IBD incidence was highest in women in the younger-than-30-years age group, which had a crude incident rate of 49/100,000 person-years, and was similar across different geographic regions.
Among participants who returned the follow-up questionnaire, 57.1% had a confirmed IBD diagnosis. By subtype, 55% had Crohn disease, and 45% had ulcerative colitis. Nearly 40% reported having had IBD-related surgery, 60% reported having had extraintestinal manifestations, and 57.7% reported having had IBD complications such as stricture, fistula, or perianal disease.
“[O]ur data demonstrate the significant burden of IBD among US Black individuals as demonstrated by high rate of complications,” researchers wrote. “Future studies are needed to further investigate the role of individual dietary and lifestyle factors and social and contextual factors on the rising incidence of IBD in the Black population in the United States.”
Reference
Anyane-Yeboa A, Buadu MAE, Khalili H, Cozier YC. Epidemiology of inflammatory bowel disease in a cohort of US Black women. Inflamm Bowel Dis. 2023;29(10):1517-1523. doi: 10.1093/ibd/izad049
