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Patients with long-term IBD faced increased risk for work disability
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Patients with inflammatory bowel disease 10 years after onset were at greater relative risk for work disability and collecting disability pensions than the background population in a recent study.
Norwegian researchers conducted a prospective population-based study of 518 patients in the Inflammatory Bowel in South Eastern Norway cohort. Patients, diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), were followed up at 1, 5 and 10 years after disease onset. The study was designed to compare work disability (WD) rates in these patients with the background population and to determine if any clinical or demographic factors could predict WD after 10 years of disease.
At 10 years, investigators collected data on WD and used public databases to gather information on disability pensions (DP) for both groups. They calculated overall and age-standardized relative risks (RR) and examined predictive factors through logistic regression analysis.
Researchers received a response rate of 83.5% from the IBD patients after 10 years, and their overall disability rate was 18.8%. The RR for receiving a DP was 1.80 (95% CI, 1.41-2.27) for patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) and 1.98 (95% CI, 1.42-2.68) for those with Crohn’s disease (CD) compared with the background population.
There was no increase in RR for IBD patients aged 60 to 67 years (RR=1.21; 95% CI, 0.71-1.51), while patients aged 40 years and younger had the greatest rate for collecting DP (RR=4.25; 95% CI, 0.63-28.64, for ages 18-29; RR=2.78; 95% CI, 1.44-5.38, for ages 30-39 years). Researchers also found corticosteroid therapy performed at the 1-year follow-up predicted WD after 10 years for patients who had either UC or CD.
“After 10 years of disease, IBD patients had an increased RR for receiving a DP compared with the Norwegian background population,” the investigators wrote. “Markers of early serious disease course, such as steroid treatment at the 1-year follow-up time point, predicted WD after 10 years of disease in both diagnostic groups [UC and CD].”
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