Abstract Background Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), a chronic gastrointestinal disease, can inflict comorbid psychiatric disorders such as anxiety and depression 1. The relationship between IBD and psychological comorbidities is thought to be a bidirectional brain-gut axis, through which anxiety and depression have been found to increase the risk for flare of IBD disease activity 2. Patient reported outcomes (PRO’s) are used increasingly to evaluate IBD and have been found to function in recognizing disease activity, fatigue, disability, quality of life, work impairment, anxiety and depression. 3 The purpose of this study was to determine, whether psychiatric disorders and other selected factors have an influence on PRO. The selected factors are IBD age of onset, gender, faecal calprotectin, psychiatric diagnosis and Crohn’s disease compared to ulcerative colitis. The secondary purpose was to discover if there are risk factors for having a psychiatric diagnosis for IBD-patients. Methods The study was conducted in Tampere, Finland 2024-2025 using Pirkanmaa BCB register for IBD-patients. The study contains 4656 adult IBD-patients, of which 406 have a psychiatric diagnosis, which were acquired from Pirkanmaa hospital registers. The PRO was evaluated through MyHealth questionnaire. The risk for a worse PRO was calculated for the selected factors as an OR using bivariate and multivariate logistic regression. No AI was used in the process. Results Depression (OR 3.23, p 0.001), anxiety and depression together (5.48, p 0.001) and female gender (OR = 1.69, p = 0.002) were found to be risk factors for worse PRO in IBD patients in multivariate regression analysis. Female gender (OR = 2.12, p 0.001) and Crohn’s disease (OR = 1.49, p = 0.001) were found to be risk factors for having a psychiatric diagnosis in multivariate regression analysis. Conclusion The study shows that psychiatric disorders, especially depression, has a lowering effect on IBD patients’ well being. This offers an indication for including evaluation of patients’ mental state and evaluate the need for psychological support as part of established IBD-treatment. References: 1 Dubinsky MC, Dotan I, Rubin DT, Bernauer M, Patel D, Cheung R, Modesto I, Latymer M, Keefer L. Burden of comorbid anxiety and depression in patients with inflammatory bowel disease: a systematic literature review. Expert Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2021 Sep;15(9):985-997. doi: 10.1080/17474124.2021.1911644. Epub 2021 Jun 15. PMID: 34130572. 2 Fairbrass KM, Lovatt J, Barberio B, Yuan Y, Gracie DJ, Ford AC. Bidirectional brain-gut axis effects influence mood and prognosis in IBD: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Gut. 2022 Sep;71(9):1773-1780. doi: 10.1136/gutjnl-2021-325985. Epub 2021 Nov 1. PMID: 34725197. 3 Jackson BD, Con D, Gorelik A, Liew D, Knowles S, De Cruz P. Examination of the relationship between disease activity and patient-reported outcome measures in an inflammatory bowel disease cohort. Intern Med J. 2018 Oct;48(10):1234-1241. doi: 10.1111/imj.13937. PMID: 29663629. Conflict of interest: Ms. Paananen, Lotta: No conflict of interest Ilus, Tuire: Personal fees for lectures: Takeda, Pfizer, Tillotts Advisory board: Johnson & Johnson, Abbvie, Lilly Solismaa, Anssi: No conflict of interest Oksanen, Pia: Personal fees from the The Finnish Association of Gastroenterology 2025 and the Finnish Crohn and Colitis -patient organisation 2023. Support for attending meetings from Abbvie, Takeda and Tillotts 2022-2024 and travel grant from The Finnish Association of Gastroenterology 2024.
Paananen et al. (Thu,) studied this question.