Women with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are at a higher risk of developing mental illness after giving birth, reveals a new study.

‘Pregnant women with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are at a higher risk of developing mental illness after giving birth, reveals a new study.’
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For every 43 pregnancies, there is one extra case of mental illness in a woman with IBD, compared to other women. The study used healthcare data on women who gave birth between 2002 and 2014 in Ontario, Canada to analyze the frequency of a new mental illness diagnosis in these women during and up to one year after a pregnancy.Read More..





Inflammatory bowel disease, or IBD, is a group of chronic gastrointestinal disorders in which people have ulceration, inflammation, and bleeding of their gastrointestinal tract, and are at risk for complications in other parts of the body. The two main subtypes are Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. People with IBD have an elevated risk of mental illness, especially anxiety and depression, potentially related to the inflammation in the gut affecting their brain.
"There's increasing awareness about mental illness in women during pregnancy and postpartum," said Dr. Eric Benchimol, senior author on the paper, and Senior Scientist at the CHEO Research Institute, Core Scientist at ICES, Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Epidemiology at the University of Ottawa, and a Pediatric Gastroenterologist at the CHEO Inflammatory Bowel Disease Centre.
"Because of the elevated risk of mental illness in people with IBD, we felt it was important to study if women with IBD were at greater risk of developing a new mental illness during pregnancy and after giving birth compared to the overall population. We found the risk to be elevated during the post-partum period for women with IBD, particularly in the first 90 days after birth. We did not find an elevated risk during pregnancy."
In the study population, pregnant women with IBD had an elevated risk of developing a new-onset mental illness postpartum when compared to women without IBD - 22.7 percent compared to 20.4 percent.
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"This is a small but significantly increased risk of new-onset mental illness in women with IBD," says Dr. Simone Vigod, lead author of the study, Scientist at the Women's College Hospital Research Institute, Chief, Department of Psychiatry, Women's College Hospital, and Adjunct Scientist at ICES.
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"These findings are very important for both patients and healthcare providers in the IBD community," says Mina Mawani, President and CEO of Crohn's and Colitis Canada. "If a pregnant woman with IBD knows that there's an elevated risk of mental illness during the post-partum period, she should discuss this potential risk with her healthcare provider. It's important that healthcare providers are aware of this increased risk in women with IBD. Together, women and their healthcare providers can look for opportunities to prevent mental illness during pregnancy and after birth as well as identify and treat it earlier."
Source-Eurekalert