Racial and Ethnic Distribution of Inflammatory Bowel Disease in the United States

The current burden of Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) in minority populations is largely unknown. We sought to evaluate the relative prevalence of CD and UC across racial and ethnic groups within the National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network (PCORnet).

We queried electronic health records from 337 centers from January 2013 to December 2018. We compared the relative prevalence of CD and UC across racial/ethnic groups to the general PCORnet populations using χ 2 and univariable logistic regression.

Among 39,864,077 patients, 114,168 had CD, and 98,225 had UC. Relative to the overall PCORnet population, Black adult patients were significantly less likely than White patients to have a diagnosis of CD (odds ratio [OR], 0.53; 95% CI, 0.52-0.54) or UC (OR, 0.41; 95% CI, 0.40-0.43). Pediatric Black patients were also less likely to have a diagnosis of CD (OR, 0.41; 95% CI, 0.39-0.43) or UC (OR, 0.38; 95% CI, 0.35-0.41). Adult Hispanic patients were less likely to have a diagnosis of CD (OR, 0.33; 95% CI, 0.32-0.34) or UC (OR, 0.45; 95% CI, 0.44-0.46) compared with non-Hispanic patients. Similarly, pediatric Hispanic patients were less likely to have a diagnosis of CD (OR, 0.34; 95% CI, 0.32-0.36) or UC (OR, 0.50; 95% CI, 0.47-0.53).

Despite the increasing racial and ethnic diversity in the United States, these data suggest that CD and UC are modestly less prevalent among patients of non-White races and Hispanic ethnicity.