Epidemiology of Crohn's disease in Québec, Canada

✍ Scribed by Anne-Marie Lowe; Pierre-Olivier Roy; Michel B.-Poulin; Pascal Michel; Alain Bitton; Laurie St-Onge; Paul Brassard

• Book ID: 102267855
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 135 KB
• Volume: 15
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1078-0998
• DOI: 10.1002/ibd.20756

✦ Synopsis

Background: Crohn's disease (CD) is an idiopathic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). We aimed to determine the prevalence and incidence of CD in Que ´bec and characterize the demographic and health-related factors associated with this disease.

Methods:

We identified CD cases in the provincial administrative databases for the years 1993-2002. The CD prevalence and incidence rates were estimated respectively for the periods 1993-2002 and 1998 -2000. We validated the identified cases using clinically confirmed IBD cases. Predictor variables of CD were analyzed using the Poisson regression model to explain the variation in CD incidence rates across Que ´bec.

Results:

In all, 21,172 patients fulfilled the CD case definition for the period. The age and sex standardized average prevalence rate for 1993-2002 was 189.7 cases / 100,000 population and the age and sex standardized incidence rate of CD for the 1998 -2000 period was 20.2 cases / 100,000 person-years. The female/male cases ratio among incident cases was 0.74 for the 0 -14-year-old group, 1.30 for the 15-64-year-old group, and 1.77 for the cases older than 65 years old. After adjustment, independent predictors of CD incidence were: incidence of 5 reportable enteric diseases, proportion of individuals of Jewish ethnicity, and proportion of immigrant people.

Conclusions:

The identified predictors of CD explained 20% of the regional variance in the incidence rate of CD in the Que ´bec population. Other factors such as genetic susceptibility to CD or the effect of an environmental cause should be taken into consideration in the models to explain the residual variance.