A systematic review of inflammatory bowel disease in Kazakhstan: prevalence, risk factors, and genetic insights

Inflammatory bowel disease is a chronic condition characterized by immune mediated inflammation and primarily includes Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. There is an increase rate of incidence of the disease in Kazakhstan. Therefore, it is important to determine the prevalence of the condition in to improve diagnosis and the treatment for the local population. They current manuscript is a systematic review of the literature that focuses on IBD from Kazakhstan with a focus on prevalence, risk factors including genetic predisposition, disease mechanism, diagnosis and treatment. The prevalence of IBD is higher in urban regions, and more prevalent in individuals under the age of 40 years. Genetic studies reported that familial IBD is quite rare in Kazakhstan, suggesting an environmental cause rather than a genetic reason that is driving the increase of prevalence. There are IBD-associated variants linked to immune function and inflammation pathways that may serve as noninvasive biomarkers for disease diagnosis and severity. However, the mechanisms of disease development and drug response may differ across different populations, therefore, there might be a need implement genetic testing to improve therapy and disease management in Kazakhstan.