Liver alterations found in patients with inflammatory bowel disease in a tertiary care center.

Introduction and Objectives

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) encompasses two main conditions: Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC); the association between these diseases and liver diseases has been described. The objective of this work is to report the frequency of these alterations in a tertiary hospital.

Material and Patients

Observational, retrospective, descriptive, case series type. Patients with a diagnosis of IBD were included, including its two variants, CD and UC. An intentional search was carried out for alterations in the liver biochemical profile, findings in imaging methods and their clinical correlation, primary biliary cholangitis (PBC), primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), autoimmune hepatitis (AIH), among other anatomical alterations. Qualitative data are expressed in percentages and quantitative data in mean±SD.

Results

62 patients were included, of which 31 were men and 31 were women, with a mean age of 42.74±15.47 years. Within this universe, there were 22 patients with CD (35.4%), 40 patients with UC (64.5%) who, according to the Montreal classification, were classified as E1=4 patients (10%), E2=12 patients (30%), E3=24 patients (60%). There were 16 patients (25.8%) who had some reported liver alteration, of which 8 (12.9%) with autoimmune liver diseases, 5 with PSC (8.06%), 2 with PBC (3.22%), 1 with HAI (1.61%). When intentionally searching for liver morphological alterations and as an incidental finding, they were found 3 (4.83%) simple hepatic cysts, 1 (1.61.%) hepatic hemangioma, and finally, 2 (3.22%) hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections.

Conclusions

IBD is commonly associated with autoimmune liver disorders. Likewise, the CUCI-PBC and CUCI-HAI relationship was found, which agrees with the international literature and is extrapolated with the population studied. Other incidental findings are also frequent, especially the high frequency of HCV compared to the general population.

Ethics statement: The study was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration (2013 World Medical Association update).

Declaration of interests: None.

Funding: This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.