Bowel disease threat looms over developing countries

The study shows that countries in the developing world may now be facing the same pattern of increasing IBD rates that the western world earlier faced.

Toronto: With increased industrialisation, countries in the developing nations will have to grapple with rising cases of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), scientists have warned.

The study, published in the journal Lancet, shows that countries in the developing world may now be facing the same pattern of increasing IBD rates that the western world earlier faced.

"Over the past 100 years, the incidence of IBD in western countries has climbed and then plateaued," said Gilaad Kaplan, Associate Professor at Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary in Canada.

"Our research shows that countries outside the western world now appear to be in the first stage of this sequence," Kaplan said.

IBD is a group of inflammatory conditions of the colon and small intestine. Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis are the principal types of the condition.

The researchers studied observational, population-based studies reporting the incidence or prevalence of Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis from 1990 or later.

The researchers found that since 1990, incidence of IBD has been rising in newly industrialised countries in Asia, Africa, and South America.

"IBD is a modern disease, growing in prevalence in North America, Europe and Australia since the 1950s," Kaplan said.. 

"As countries in Asia, South America and the Middle East have become industrialised, IBD has emerged and its incidence is rising dramatically. At the turn of the 21st century, it became a global disease," Kaplan added.

"As newly industrialised countries become more westernized, we can clearly see that the incidence of IBD is also rapidly rising," Siew Ng from Chinese University of Hong Kong said.