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. 2024 Dec 20;13(24):7806.
doi: 10.3390/jcm13247806.

Women with IBD Show Higher Psychophysiological Burden in Comparison to Men with IBD

Franziska Schulz  1   2 , Ann Christina Foldenauer  2 , Lara Weidmann  1 , Anne Kerstin Thomann  3 , Andrea Oliver Tal  4 , Sandra Plachta-Danielzik  5 , Thomas Krause  6 , Bernd Bokemeyer  7 , Stefan Zeuzem  1 , Alica Kubesch  1   2 , Irina Blumenstein  1   2
Affiliations

Women with IBD Show Higher Psychophysiological Burden in Comparison to Men with IBD

Franziska Schulz et al. J Clin Med. .

Abstract

Background: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) remains an incurable illness. Patients with IBD show gender-specific differences in various aspects of the disease. There is still uncertainty about the causality of the differences. Methods: The aim of this study was to determine the most relevant psychophysiological gender-specific differences in IBD. For this purpose, a questionnaire survey was conducted on disease activity and psychological concomitant diseases in patients with IBD (n = 300). Among the 218 patients with IBD who provided gender information, both genders were equally distributed. Results: Females with IBD are significantly more affected by IBD-related symptoms than men. Disease activity Scores Harvey-Bradshaw Index (HBI), Partial Mayo Score (pMAYO) showed no significant differences between the sexes in the subgroups with CD (HBI, m: 3 (IQR 1-6), w: 4 (IQR 2-8), p = 0.0677) and UC (pMAYO, m: 1 (IQR 0-4), w: 3 (IQR 0-5), p = 0.2118). IBD Questionnaire (IBDQ)shows significant differences in the gender-specific analysis. The mean value of the IBDQ total score of the female participants was 4.4 (SD 1.1) and that of men was 5.0 (SD 1.0) (p = 0.0002). Conclusions: There is a great need to investigate the causality of gender-specific differences in greater depth.

Keywords: gender-specific differences; inflammatory bowel disease; psychophysiological impairment; survey.

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Conflict of interest statement

I.B. reports consulting and lecturer fees from Takeda, AbbVie, Amgen, Biogen, Janssen-Cilag, Celgene/BMS GmbH, Celltrion, Falk Foundation, Fresenius Kabi, Galapagos, Lilly, Pharmacosmos, and Pfizer. A.K. reports consulting and lecturer fees from Takeda, Janssen-Cilag, Celgene/BMS GmbH, AbbVie, and Galapagos, Research Cooperation with Fraunhofer Institute, Sanofi Aventis, Research Funding from BMBF. T.K. reports consulting and lecturer fees from Takeda, AbbVie, and Janssen. A.K.T speaker and advisory fees from Abbvie, Ferring, Galapagos, Janssen, Pfizer, Takeda; Research Grant from Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. B.B. Consulting Fee: Abbvie, MSD, Shire, Ferring, UCB, Hospira, Takeda, Movetis, Shield Therapeutics, Pfizer, Biogen, Janssen, Hexal, Cellgene, Boehringer, Allergan, Galapagos, Arena, BMS; Speaking and Teaching: Abbvie, Ferring, MSD, Merckle, Falk, HLR, UCB, Shield Therapeutics, Pfizer, Celltrion, Takeda, Janssen, Mundipharma, Arena, Galapagos, BMS; Grant/Research: Abbvie, Ferring, UCB, Given Imaging, Janssen, Takeda, Pfizer, Galapagos. S.Z. reports consultancy and speaker’s bureau fees from Abbvie, Allergan, BioMarin, Gilead, Intercept, Janssen, MSD/Merck, Novo Nordisk, SoBi, and Theratechnologies. All other authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Radar plot of median scores of IBD disk item topics where problems of patients arose (range 0 to 10); higher scores are worse. Women showed overall worse item scores than men in all topics except social interaction. Significantly worse outcomes for female patients with IBD compared with males were observed in the topics of abdominal pain, sleep, energy, depressed/sad state, body image, and joint pain (see Table 1).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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