inflammatory bowel diseases, new comments in diagnosis and treatment

ulcerative colitis (uc) and crohn's disease (cd) are chronic inflammatory bowel diseases with uncertain etiology thought to be triggered by interactions between various environmental, genetic and immunologic factors. incidence rate of cd and uc is different in various geographic areas around the world, between 0.1-11 and 0.5-24.5 per 100,000 people for cd and uc, respectively. recent studies indicate a gradual increase in both cd and uc all over the world. given the fact that the prevalence of ibd in high rate incidence areas duplicates every 10 years, it is predicted that these diseases are going to be among the most important health issues even in developing countries. since patients are mostly young adults and because of 50% recurrence rate in ibd, quality of life will be affected greatly. having more information about these diseases will improve health status in our country. in this study, we decided to discuss the main topics on ibd by reviewing the literature and recent papers.