Authors: Leong RW, Lau JY, Sung JJ.

Institution: Department of Gastroenterology, The University of New South Wales, Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital, Sydney, NSW, Australia. repertleong@hotmail.com

Background: Inflammatory bowel disease is uncommon in Southeast Asia but is increasing in incidence. The epidemiology and phenotype of Crohn disease (CD) in the Chinese population is not well-known. The purpose of this study was to determine the incidence, temporal trend, clinical features, risk factors, extraintestinal manifestations, and the treatment of CD in the Chinese population of Hong Kong.

Conclusion: The incidence of CD in the Chinese is increasing. There are some notable epidemiological and phenotypic differences between Chinese CD with Caucasian CD including the lack of familial clustering, male predominance, and higher proportion of upper GIT involvement and lower frequency of isolated terminal ileal disease. Copyright 2004 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

Study link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15472528&query_hl=35&itool=pubmed_docsum

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