Incidence and prevalence of inflammatory bowel diseases in a population from Buenos Aires, Argentina

Background

Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) incidence and prevalence in Latin America have experienced a significant shift in the last decades. There is paucity of IBD epidemiologic data in Argentina.

Aim

To determine the incidence and prevalence of IBD between 2018 and 2022 of a population from the city of Buenos Aires.

Materials and methods

From January 1st, 2018 to December 31st, 2022, the total population of two healthcare insurances were studied. ‘Possible’ IBD cases were identified using the following information sources: IBD-unit patient databases; electronic medical record; central laboratory electronic database; histopathology electronic database; pharmacy electronic database. Age-adjusted incidence and prevalence rates for Crohn's disease (CD), ulcerative colitis (UC) and IBD were estimated based on the number of patients compared with the at-risk population and expressed per 100,000 subjects. Trends in IBD incidence and prevalence were estimated as annual percentage changes; we used Poisson regression modeling to calculate significance in these trends over time.

Results

Information source analysis rendered 172 possible cases, of which 82 cases of IBD were finally confirmed: 27.16% were CD and 72.84% were UC. Mean age-standardized incidence across the study period for IBD, CD and UC was 11.93 (11.28–12.55), 2.88 (2.65–3.07) and 9.05 (8.83–9.2) respectively. Point prevalence on December 31st, 2022 for IBD, UC and CD was 134 (95%CI 132.3–135.6), 98 (96.95–99.52) and 36 (35.69–36.4) respectively.

Conclusions

We found an incidence and prevalence of IBD in a population from Buenos Aires higher than those previously published in epidemiological studies in Argentina.