Canada has amongst the highest rates of pediatric inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in the world, and the number of children under five years old being diagnosed increased by 7.2 per cent every year between 1999 to 2010, according to a new study by researchers at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES), Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) Research Institute and the Canadian Gastro-Intestinal Epidemiology Consortium.
“The number of children under five being diagnosed with IBD is alarming because it was almost unheard of 20 years ago, and it is now much more common,” says Dr. Eric Benchimol, lead author of the study, scientist at ICES, associate professor at the University of Ottawa, and a pediatric gastroenterologist at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Inflammatory Bowel Disease Centre, in Ottawa.
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