Characteristics of pediatric inflammatory bowel disease in Korea: Comparison with EUROKIDS data

Background/Aims: Pediatric inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has been increasing worldwide. The characteristics of pediatric-onset IBD have mainly been reported in Western countries. We investigated the clinical characteristics of pediatric IBD in Korea and compared these with the data from the 5-year European multicenter study of children with new-onset IBD (EUROKIDS registry). Methods: Children who were diagnosed with IBD between July 1987 and January 2012 were investigated at five Korean university hospitals. Their clinical characteristics were retrospectively evaluated by medical record review. The results were compared with the EUROKIDS data. Results: A total of 30 children with Crohn's disease (CD) and 33 children with ulcerative colitis (UC) were enrolled. In comparison with the EUROKIDS group, Korean pediatric IBD patients showed a male predominance (86.7% vs 59.2%, p=0.002 in CD; 75.8% vs 50%, p=0.003 in UC). Korean pediatric CD patients had a higher prevalence of terminal ileal disease (36.7% vs 16.3%, p=0.004) and perianal disease (33.3% vs 8.2%, p<0.001) than patients in the EUROKIDS group. Korean pediatric UC patients had a higher prevalence of proctitis than patients in the EUROKIDS group. Conclusions: Our results suggest that the characteristics of Korean pediatric IBD patients and European pediatric IBD patients may be different.