The infectious risk in patients hospitalised for IBD

The inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), comprising Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC), are chronic, progressive, inflammatory conditions of the gastrointestinal tract. This disease is characterized by remitting and relapsing episodes of inflammation called flares. Gut Dysbiosis together with defective intestinal barrier function, likely lead to a sustain inflammation and contribute to the development of IBD with a combination of genetic susceptibility and other environmental factors. Enteric infections are a common cause of dysbiosis and is frequently identified in patients with IBD. This retrospective study has as an objective to determine the infectious risk in hospitalized IBD patients for a flare and to evaluate the outcome of enteric infections in the post discharge including hospital readmissions, therapy optimizations and IBD related surgery. The results of the study showed a high incidence of enteric infections in IBD with respect to non IBD patients. Enteric infections demonstrated a long hospitalization duration with respect to non-infected IBD patients and induced a steroid dependency status within 3 months. It was also observed that non-CDI infections in IBD patients results in a worsening in post discharge outcome in comparison with CDI infections. In summary, our data suggest that gastrointestinal infections in IBD patients play an important role on complications, like hospitalization, and natural course of the disease. Early detection, appropriate management, and prevention strategies are crucial to avoid their deleterious outcomes.