Is Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Hereditary?

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) could be hereditary. Further genetic research in the coming years will help us understand the disease better. Learn more from Dr. Eugene Yen on behalf of NorthShore University HealthSystem about IBD.

Transcript

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Is IBD hereditary? Partially, while we certainly see clusters of patients with IBD in families. The majority of our patients with

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inflammatory bowel disease do not have a family history of Crohn's or colitis. Well, some studies have reported up to 20% of

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people with Crohn's or colitis have a family member that they know of with IBD we feel that this number is a little bit lower. And therefore,

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I tell most of the my patients that the odds of passing this on to their children is also lower than that number as well. This

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is an area of quite active research and I think in the next few years we're gonna be able to better understand the role of genetics