About the Project
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) includes ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease and are characterized by chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract and concomitant symptoms such as diarrhea, rectal bleeding, abdominal pain, fatigue and weight loss.
Increased incidence and lifelong medical condition
Patients with IBD constitute the largest group of chronically diseased patients within the field of gastroenterology. About 45.000 Norwegians are affected and the incidence has been increasing worldwide during the last decades, especially in the pediatric population.
Being diagnosed with IBD, the young patients face the prospect of a lifelong medical condition with a heterogeneous, unpredictable and potentially debilitating disease course. Thus, the impact of IBD may be considerable, both for the patient and the society.
Early intervention and careful, individualized planning is essential
Large scale, unselected and treatment naïve study populations are optimal for the studies of etiology and prognostic factors, as well as changes in epidemiology and possible alterations of the natural disease course.
The IBSEN III study will map newly diagnosed and treatment naïve IBD patients at various levels (epidemiological, clinical, psychosocial and nutritional as well as immunological, genetic, epigenetic and microbial) to improve targeted and individualized treatment and care.
The study is an observational population-based inception cohort study with prospective follow-up after 1, 5 and 10 years. It includes adults and pediatric patients with untreated and newly diagnosed IBD as well as non-IBD controls, recruited from a geographically well-defined area (the South Eastern Health Region) from 01.01.2017 to 31.12.2019.
Objectives
Main objective
The IBSEN III study aims to find and test diagnostic, prognostic and predictive factors for improved, personalized treatment and care for patients with inflammatory bowel disease (Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis).
User participation
In close collaboration with the Gastrointestinal Association (in Norwegian), we have established a group of user representatives, who are patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease. These will contribute at all levels and in all phases of the project.
Working groups
The study includes several sub-projects within six work groups:
- Clinical epidemiology and health economy
- Diet and IBD
- Radiology
- Patient-reported outcomes
- Pediatric IBD
- Microbiota, immunology, genetics and epigenetics