MedWire News: African Americans do not suffer from more severe forms of inflammatory bowel disease than their Caucasian counterparts, researchers have found.

There are conflicting reports on whether African Americans have a more severe course of Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis than Caucasians with these conditions, explain Dr Susan Galandiuk and colleagues from the University of Louisville in Kentucky, USA.

To investigate further, the team examined data from eight published studies involving more than 2000 people with inflammatory bowel disease, of whom 17% were African Americans.

The team found that African Americans and Caucasians had a similar distribution of inflammatory bowel disease types, with Crohn's disease affecting 76% of African Americans and 68% of Caucasians, and ulcerative colitis affecting 24% and 32%, respectively.

Similar numbers of African Americans and Caucasians had mild disease at diagnosis, and there were no significant differences between the groups regarding the location of disease in the intestines.

Furthermore, bone joint complications were the most common symptoms that occurred outside the gastrointestinal tract in both African Americans and Caucasians.

"This study dispels the commonly held views that African Americans with inflammatory bowel disease generally have more colonic disease, more severe disease behaviour, and more perianal disease than Caucasians," Dr Galandiuk and team conclude in the journal Inflammatory Bowel Diseases.