Ken Lund [1, 2], Floor D. Zegers [1], Jan Nielsen [1,2], Jacob B. Brodersen [3, 4], Torben Knudsen [3, 4], Jens Kjeldsen [5, 6], Michael D. Larsen [1,7], Bente M. Nørgård [1, 2]

Affiliates

[1] Center for Clinical Epidemiology, Odense University Hospital, Odense, Denmark. [2] Research Unit of Clinical Epidemiology, Department of Clinical Research, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark. [3] Department of Medical Gastroenterology, Hospital of Southwest Jutland, Esbjerg, Denmark. [4] Department of Regional Health Science, University of Southern Denmark, Esbjerg, Denmark. [5] Department of Medical Gastroenterology S, Odense University Hospital, Odense, Denmark. [6] Research Unit of Medical Gastroenterology, Department of Clinical Research, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark. [7] Department of Clinical and Molecular Medicine, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.

Abstract

Background
The incidence of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) is increasing. Co-medication is clinically important in addition to the treatment of IBD. However, real-world data on co-medication is sparse. Thus, we aimed to describe whether a diagnosis of IBD affects the prescription pattern of co-medication used to treat other diseases in adult-onset and elderly-onset IBD.

Methods
This nationwide cohort study utilized data from Danish Health Registers. We included patients with adult-onset of IBD (18-59 years of age) and elderly-onset of IBD (+60 years of age) from 1998-2018 with three years of follow-up after the diagnosis for all patients. We identified patients who had at least two diagnoses of IBD in The National Patient Register. We described redeemed prescriptions of 11 common groups for medication used to treat conditions other than IBD using data from The Danish National Prescription Registry.

Results
We identified 36,165 incident patients. We created two cohorts; 27,386 (75%) had adult-onset IBD, and 8,779 (25%) patients had elderly-onset IBD, Table 1. The proportion of patients with redeemed prescriptions in both cohorts was statistically significantly increased one and three years after onset of IBD for antidepressants, antipsychotics, sedatives/hypnotics, opioids, non-opioid analgesics, antidiabetics, and proton pump inhibitors, compared to one and three years before diagnosis (Figure 1 & Figure 2).

Conclusion
The proportion of patients with redeemed prescriptions for antidepressants, antipsychotics, sedatives/hypnotics, opioids, non-opioid analgesics, antidiabetics, and proton pump inhibitors was significantly increased one and three years after a diagnosis of IBD compared to one and three years before diagnosis.