A new study, conducted by scientists from the University of Pennsylvania, found that both children and adults diagnosed with atopic dermatitis have a higher risk of developing inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
For their study, the research team took data from more than 409,000 children and 625,000 adults with atopic dermatitis and compared them to more than 1.8 million children and almost 2.7 million adults who don’t have the condition.
Having completed the analysis, the researchers noticed a “statistically significant” higher risk of incident or new-onset IBD among 44% of children and 34% of adults with atopic dermatitis, compared to the control groups.
Senior author Dr. Joel Gelfand, a professor in clinical investigation and the director of the Center for Clinical Sciences in Dermatology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, says: “Treatments for atopic dermatitis are improving dramatically, but we will need to determine if these treatments reduce or increase (the) risk of other immune-mediated diseases over time. For example, biologics that target IL4/13Trusted Source, such as dupilumabTrusted Source, can be incredibly effective for atopic dermatitis but also seem to induce other immune problems such as psoriasis and inflammatory arthritis in a small subset of patients.”