Study: Bowel disease is linked to clot risk

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Study: Bowel disease is linked to clot risk

Star news services

March 21, 2004

People suffering from inflammatory bowel disease face a greatly

increased risk of developing blood clots in their veins, new research

discloses.

The finding, which shows those with IBD have more than triple the risk

for clots, will appear in the April issue of Gut.

The study's authors report that previous data on IBD and blood clots was

conflicting, with prevalence estimates ranging from 1.2 percent to 6.7

percent in clinical studies and 39 percent in postmortem studies.

IBD is a chronic disease caused by inflammation of the intestines. There

are two main types: ulcerative colitis, which is when the large

intestine develops ulcers, and Crohn's disease, which refers to an

inflammation of the lining and wall of the large and/or small intestine.

For this study, researchers compared the risk of clotting in patients

with IBD, rheumatoid arthritis and celiac disease with a set of control

subjects.

In all, the study included 618 patients with IBD, 243 with rheumatoid

arthritis and 207 with celiac disease, along with 707 healthy controls.

All were asked to fill out questionnaires regarding previous blood

clots. Positive answers were then confirmed radiologically.

Thirty-eight IBD patients (6.1 percent of IBD patients) turned out to

have suffered clots compared with 10 cases (or 1.4 percent) of the

control group.

The risk for clotting seemed to increase with age among the group of

participants with IBD and was more evident when the patient had active

disease.

Participants with rheumatoid arthritis or celiac disease had about the

same risk of clotting as the controls did.

The researchers did not know why the risk of blood clots is higher with

IBD than with other disorders.

But the study's senior author, Gottfried Novacek of the University of

Vienna in Austria, says the results indicate a direction for further

study.

http://www.indystar.com/articles/5/131136-9995-052.html

I'll tell you where to go!

Mayo Clinic in Rochester

http://www.mayoclinic.org/rochester

s Hopkins Medicine

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org