Between 70% and 80% of patients with ulcerative colitis relapsed within 10 years of diagnosis and 10%-15% had aggressive disease in a meta-analysis of 17 population-based cohorts spanning 1935 to 2016.
However, “contemporary population-based cohorts of patients diagnosed in the biologic era are lacking,” [and they] “may inform us of the population-level impact of paradigm shifts in approach to ulcerative colitis management during the last decade, such as early use of disease-modifying biologic therapy and treat-to-target [strategies],” wrote Mathurin Fumery, MD, of the University of California San Diego, La Jolla. The report was published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology (2017 Jun 16. doi: 10.1016/j.cgh.2017.06.016).
Population-based observational cohort studies follow an entire group in a geographic area over an extended time, which better characterizes the true natural history of disease outside highly controlled settings of clinical trials, the reviewers noted. They searched MEDLINE for population-based longitudinal studies of adults with newly diagnosed ulcerative colitis, whose medical records were reviewed, and who were followed for at least a year. They identified 60 such studies of 17 cohorts that included 15,316 patients in southern and northern Europe, Australia, Israel, the United States, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand.
Left-sided colitis was most common (median, 40%; interquartile range, 33%-45%) and about 10%-30% of patients had disease extension. Patients tended to have mild to moderate disease that was most active at diagnosis and subsequently alternated between remission and mild activity. However, nearly half of patients were hospitalized at some point because of ulcerative colitis, and about half of that subgroup was rehospitalized within 5 years. Furthermore, up to 15% of patients with ulcerative colitis underwent colectomy within 10 years, a risk that mucosal healing helped mitigate. Use of corticosteroids dropped over time as the prevalence of immunomodulators and anti–tumor necrosis factor therapy rose.