NEW YORK (Reuters Health)—Patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are at slightly increased risk of invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD), according to Danish researchers.
In a paper online Sept. 8 in The American Journal of Gastroenterology, Bjørn Kantsø of Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen and colleagues note that the inappropriate immune response against infective agents seen in IBD patients may increase the risk of bacterial infections. This might also be true of treatment with immunomodulators.
To investigate further, the team conducted a population-based cohort study spanning 1977 to 2012, and involving more than 74,000 IBD patients and close to 1.5 million IBD-free controls.
During more than 824,000 person-years of follow-up, 277 IBD patients were diagnosed with IPD (0.37%) as were 3,984 controls (0.27%).