Demographic and dietary profile of patients with ulcerative colitis at Al-Rajhi University Hospital, Assiut, Egypt

Abstract

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a form of inflammatory bowel disease. Multiple disease relapses can impair the quality of life in UC patients and an increased risk of colitis-associated complications. Diet is known to play an important role in the complex pathogenesis of UC and many patients attribute their disease relapses to diet.This research aimed to study the demographic and dietary profiles in UC patients, to assess the beliefs towards the effect of nutrition on disease condition, and to study the effect of diet on disease severity.A cross-sectional study was conducted at Al-Rajhi University Hospitals, Assiut and included 70 patients diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. The mean age of studied patients was 35.63 ± 9.92 years and more than half of them were females. As regards socioeconomic level, 55.7% of patients were from middle level and 42.9% of patients were from low socioeconomic level. The most frequently consumed food items were beans and cereals while meat, sea food and eggs are the least frequent. The majority of patients believed that nutrition is an important cause of the disease. There was a significant association between fiber content of diet and disease severity. In conclusion, more than half of the patients were from middle socioeconomic level, different dietary contents have a great affect in patients with ulcerative colitis. Patients consuming high fiber diets were found to have better disease outcome with low disease severity. More than half of patients with high- fiber diet had mild disease and received conventional therapy.