Is there a link between inflammatory bowel disease and the metabolic syndrome?

Hester FranksAcademic F2

Supervisors Professors Hawkey and Macdonald

Background and hypothesisMethodsResults to date

Background and hypothesis

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) Crohn’s disease (CD) Ulcerative colitis (UC)

Metabolic syndrome Genetic predisposition to both conditions There seem to be an increasing number of obese

patients in IBD clinics. Is it possible that in the obese patients it is their

obesity/the metabolic syndrome rather than these polymorphisms which predisposes them to IBD?

Methods

3 groupsCD BMI>28CD BMI<23Controls BMI>28

2 parts to studyGenetic analysis for SNPs & baseline

metabolic analysisDetailed analysis of fasting and postprandial

metabolic state

Results

So far167 UC patients 110 CD patients

Healthy volunteers being recruited by advertisement

No gene/metabolic data yet

BMI distributions of UC and CD

BMI of Ulcerative Colitis patients

02468

10121416

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

BMI

BMI of Crohn's Disease patients

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

BMI

Conclusions to date

There does seem to be an overweight subgroup in CD +/- UC

SNP analysis may give us evidence that some of the overweight patients have IBD as a manifestation of the metabolic syndrome