This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Most pediatric IBD patients displayed similar rates of depressive symptoms compared with non-IBD peers
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Children and teenagers with inflammatory bowel disease did not exhibit greater rates of clinical depression than those who do not have the disease, according to recent study data.
From July 2008 through July 2011, data were analyzed for 78 pediatric patients (mean age, 13.79 years; 51% male) with confirmed inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), aged 8 to 17.5 years, who were enrolled in the Pediatric IBD Collaborative Research Group Registry. The group comprised 24 pediatric gastroenterology centers in the United States and Canada.
Each patient was administered the Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI), a 27-item assessment of depressive symptoms targeted to children aged 7 to 17 years. A comparison (“community”) sample of 564 children (mean age, 12.43 years) without IBD also was given the CDI test. The researchers assessed participant responses in relation to their respective disease severity. When surveyed, 79% of patients had Crohn’s disease, and 21% had ulcerative colitis.
Physicians classified patients’ disease severity as inactive (63%), mild (18%), or moderate/severe (14%), with severity level unavailable for 5% of the cohort. The patients with moderate/severe disease reported higher rates of depressive symptoms compared with other IBD patients and the community sample. Overall, however, patients with IBD had fewer symptoms than did the participants in the community sample and had lower mean scores on the CDI test (4.83 vs. 6.08).
“Our findings clearly indicate that most pediatric patients with IBD do not experience clinical levels of depressive symptoms,” the researchers wrote. “Clinicians should remain vigilant regarding the assessment of mood disturbance in youth with IBD, and also consider constructs such as health-related quality of life that may offer a broader and more applicable view of the difficulties experienced by this patient population.”
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts