The epidemiology and prevalence of Ulcerative colitis in the South of India

Abstract

Ulcerative colitis is considered frequent in majority of European and North American population and exceptional in most of the developing Asian countries. There is a dearth of reported data from South India on the incidence of the disease and its prevalence. Hence the present study was designed to estimate the prevalence of ulcerative colitis in a tertiary care hospital of Hyderabad, South India. The study population consisted of 157 Ulcerative colitis and 204 healthy subjects. All subjects were interviewed by means of a questionnaire for general demographical details and socioeconomic conditions, health related quality of life and history of UC. Patients were categorized based on disease severity; moderate: 95, and severe: 62 and disease manifestation: 73 (46.5%) pancolitis, 60 (38.2%) left-sided colitis and 24 (15.3%) had proctosigmoiditits. Disease prevalence was high in patients of <35 years age. Junk/outside food consumers were significantly high in Ulcerative colitis than controls 68 (43.3%) vs 67 (32.8%) p = 0.048. There was no significant difference of disease prevalence with diet, drinking habits and alcoholic consumption. Whereas UC prevalence was high in nonsmokers than smokers (p = 0.025). This report establishes the importance of various factors in ulcerative colitis. This is the first population based study from South India that reports the prevalence of ulcerative colitis. Ulcerative colitis is more predominant in young age. Further, junk food consumers and Non-smokers/ex-smokers were found to be high in terms of UC prevalence.