An IBD Crystal Ball: Forecasting the Incidence and Prevalence of Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Understanding the incidence and prevalence of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is critical for health care systems to anticipate future needs. The third of 4 IBD epidemiologic stages, known as compounding prevalence, occurs when IBD incidence stabilizes but prevalence increases as new diagnoses exceed mortality. Because this stage is associated with increased strain on medical resources, researchers sought to analyze data from 9 geographically diverse regions in the third epidemiologic stage to better understand these trends.

The researchers collected population-based age- and sex-standardized IBD incidence and prevalence information from Canada, Catalonia, Denmark, Hungary, Israel, New Zealand, Scotland, Sweden, and the United States. They analyzed historical epidemiologic data and used autoregressive integrated moving-average models to forecast incidence and prevalence. In addition, they applied a novel Bayesian approach to aggregate and forecast data.

Among the 9 regions, overall incidence rates remained steady at 33.3 per 100,000 person-years in 2015 and 31.1 per 100,000 person-years in 2025. However, overall prevalence increased by 2.29% per year, and prevalence is projected to approach 1% of the population by 2035.