The Clinical Features of Elderly-onset Ulcerative Colitis
摘要
Ulcerative colitis (UC) has a bimodal age distribution and increasingly recognized as a disease affecting the elderly. This was a retrospective cohort study in which medication use, disease extent, disease severity at the time of diagnosis, hospitalizations rate were evaluated in 87 patients. The natural course of disease was compared between patients with non-elderly onset UC (＜ 60 years of age at diagnosis) and those of elderly-onset UC (＞ 60 years of age at diagnosis). Sixty-seven patients developed non-elderly onset UC and 20 patients had elderly-onset UC. Atypical clinical presentations of UC of constipation and fever were more frequent among older patients (15% vs. 1.5%, P = 0.01 and 15% vs. 2.9%, P= 0.04, respectively). Furthermore, the non-elderly onset group had more severe disease at the time of diagnosis than the elderly-onset group (P = 0.001). Overall medication use did not differ significantly between the two groups. As increasing numbers of elderly patients develop UC, there is a need to understand and optimize therapeutic management in this unique population.