TOPLINE:

Patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) had a significantly higher risk for developing interstitial lung disease (ILD) compared with the general population and siblings who do not have the condition.

METHODOLOGY:

• Although pulmonary complications of IBD have been recognized for over a decade, they remain largely unstudied.
• Researchers conducted a population-based cohort study in Sweden between 1969 and 2019 to assess the long-term risk for ILD in 85,705 patients diagnosed with IBD (median age, 41 years; 48% women).
• They matched these patients to 412,677 control individuals from the general population (median age, 41 years; 48% women) and to 101,278 IBD-free siblings of the patients (median age, 39 years; 49% women).
• The primary outcome was incident ILD, a broad group of lung diseases characterized by inflammation and fibrosis that often lead to respiratory failure.

TAKEAWAY:

• During a median follow-up of 14 years, ILD was diagnosed in 0.51% of patients with IBD vs 0.30% of control individuals, corresponding to incidence rates of 34 and 20 per 100,000 person-years, respectively.
• Patients with IBD had a 48% higher risk of developing ILD than the matched control individuals and an 81% higher risk than their siblings.
• Subgroup analyses found similar adjusted hazard ratios (aHRs) for ILD across IBD subtypes (