A registry of patients with inflammatory bowel diseases, ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease (CD), was created at the University of Puerto Rico in 1995. Subjects with a documented diagnosis of IBD by clinical, radiologic, endoscopic, and/or pathologic criteria were recruited from the IBD clinics, support groups, and community practices, and demographic and medical data was collected. All entries from 1995 to 2009 were analyzed for demographics, family history, disease extent, extraintestinal manifestations, surgery, and smoking history. Results were described using summary statistics. 635 Hispanics living in Puerto Rico, 299 with UC and 336 with CD, were included. Mean ages were 40.3 for UC and 30.9 for CD. Over half (56%) of UC and 41% of CD were females. Family history was present in 19.3% of UC and 17.5% of CD. Surgery for IBD had been performed in 31.9% of UC and 51.2% of the CD patients. Over one-fourth of the patients reported extraintestinal manifestations, most frequently arthropathies. Our findings contribute to the limited epidemiologic and clinical data on Hispanics with IBD. 1. Introduction The study of Crohn’s (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) has been focused on Caucasians, as the incidence and diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) have been more evident in this population. The rates of UC and CD are highest in northern climates, in urban regions, and in well-developed areas of the world such as North America and Europe and lowest in southern climates and underdeveloped areas [1–4]. The reported prevalence of IBD in adults in the United States (US) has ranged from 37 to 238 per 100,000 for UC and 26 to 201 per 100,000 for CD [4, 5]. The epidemiology of IBD seems to be changing. Incidence in North America, Northern and Western Europe has stabilized, and low incidence areas are showing an increase [4]. The racial and ethnic differences also seem to be narrowing. Reports of IBD from Barbados and the French West Indies in the Caribbean illustrate these changes [6, 7]. There is an increasing recognition of IBD in the minority populations of the United States [7–16], and several studies have described the epidemiology of IBD in these populations. Many of these studies have centered on blacks with IBD, while IBD in Hispanics is less well defined. The incidence and prevalence of IBD in Puerto Rico has been rising over the past decades [17–19]. With the aim of further examining Hispanics with IBD, we describe the demographic and clinical characteristics of a large university-based registry of IBD in Hispanics living in Puerto Rico.
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