AIM

To investigate differences of clinical characteristics and disease courses between familial and sporadic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients.

METHODS

We obtained clinical data on Crohn's disease (CD) (n = 691) and ulcerative colitis (n = 1113) from a tertiary referral medical center between 2005 and 2012. Seventeen patients (2.5%) with CD and 27 patients (2.4%) with ulcerative colitis (UC) were identified as having a familial history of IBD, including the first and second degree relatives. For each control case, three times the number of age-, sex-, and diagnosis year-matched CD and UC patients, without a family history of IBD, were randomly selected in this case control study.

RESULTS

There were no significant differences in age or main symptom at diagnosis, extraintestinal manifestation, location/extent, behavior of disease activity, number of hospitalizations, number of operations, operation type, number of relapses, or oral medical treatment between familial and sporadic CD and UC patients. Median (min-max) follow-up periods after diagnosis of familial CD and sporadic CD patients were 84 (24-312) and 36 (8-240) mo, respectively (P = 0.008). Familial CD patients more frequently used anti-tumor necrosis factor (TNF) antibodies compared to sporadic CD patients (17.6% vs 0%, P = 0.014).

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, a family history of IBD does not seem to be an important predictive factor affecting clinical characteristics or disease course even if there is a more frequent use of anti-TNF antibodies in familial CD patients compared to sporadic CD patients.