Inflammatory Bowel Disease: A Global Disease

Over the last two decades, there has been a remarkable globalization of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) with a striking increase in especially Crohn’s disease.[1] The relationship between genetics, microbiota, and environment are being unraveled at an exponential rate.[2,3] The rapid increase of Crohn’s disease point to significant globalized environmental contributions. The rising prevalence and incidence of IBD has been recently confirmed in a global systematic review. The number of genes implicated in the susceptibility to IBD has now increased to 163 loci[2] that meet GWAS significance threshold. Many of these implicate novel pathways such as autophagy as well as susceptibility to mycobacterial infections. There is also genetic overlap between IBD and other autoimmune diseases such as ankylosing spondylitis and psoriasis.