Women with IBD Show Higher Psychophysiological Burden in Comparison to Men with IBD.

Background

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) remains an incurable illness. Patients with IBD show gender-specific differences in various aspects of the disease. There is still uncertainty about the causality of the differences.

Methods

The aim of this study was to determine the most relevant psychophysiological gender-specific differences in IBD. For this purpose, a questionnaire survey was conducted on disease activity and psychological concomitant diseases in patients with IBD (n = 300). Among the 218 patients with IBD who provided gender information, both genders were equally distributed.

Results

Females with IBD are significantly more affected by IBD-related symptoms than men. Disease activity Scores Harvey-Bradshaw Index (HBI), Partial Mayo Score (pMAYO) showed no significant differences between the sexes in the subgroups with CD (HBI, m: 3 (IQR 1-6), w: 4 (IQR 2-8), p = 0.0677) and UC (pMAYO, m: 1 (IQR 0-4), w: 3 (IQR 0-5), p = 0.2118). IBD Questionnaire (IBDQ)shows significant differences in the gender-specific analysis. The mean value of the IBDQ total score of the female participants was 4.4 (SD 1.1) and that of men was 5.0 (SD 1.0) (p = 0.0002).

Conclusions

There is a great need to investigate the causality of gender-specific differences in greater depth.