Inflammatory bowel disease and immune-mediated diseases

Immune-mediated diseases are disorders characterized by an altered immune response in genetically predisposed individuals. They often share susceptibility genes and environmental factors and, for this reason, they tend to cluster in members of the same family or, often, in the same individual. The two main forms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), Crohn’s disease (CD) and Ulcerative Colitis (UC), have often been associated to other forms of immune-mediated diseases, mainly dermatological (psoriasis) and rheumatological ones (ankylosing spondylitis), though the incidence of diseases of the gastrointestinal tract (primary sclerosing cholangitis, especially associated to UC; autoimmune hepatitis and celiac disease), nervous system (multiple sclerosis) and respiratory system (asthma, particularly increased in patients affected from CD) is also commonly increased in these patients. Interestingly, some diseases are able to influence the course of other diseases, while some of them may be paradoxically induced by the therapies utilized to treat them.