A New Look at Familial Risk of Inflammatory Bowel Disease in the Ashkenazi Jewish Population

Abstract

Background and AimsThe inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) are particularly common among the Ashkenazi Jewish (AJ) population. Population-specific estimates of familial risk are important for counseling; however, relatively small cohorts of AJ IBD patients have been analyzed for familial risk to date. This study aimed to recruit a new cohort of AJ IBD patients, mainly from the UK, to determine the familial occurrence of disease.MethodsA total of 864 AJ IBD patients were recruited through advertisements, hospital clinics, and primary care. Participants were interviewed about their Jewish ancestry, disease phenotype, age of diagnosis, and family history of disease. Case notes were reviewed.ResultsThe 864 probands comprised 506 sporadic and 358 familial cases, the latter with a total of 625 affected relatives. Of the UK cases, 40% had a positive family history with 25% having at least one affected first-degree relative. These percentages were lower among those recruited through hospital clinics and primary care (33% for all relatives and 22% among first-degree relatives). Examining all probands, the relative risk of IBD for offspring, siblings, and parents was 10.5, 7.4, and 4, respectively. Age of diagnosis was significantly lower in familial versus sporadic patients with Crohn’s disease.ConclusionsThis study reports familial risk estimates for a significant proportion of the AJ IBD population in the UK. The high rate of a positive family history in this cohort may reflect the greater genetic burden for IBD among AJs. These data are of value in predicting the likelihood of future recurrence of IBD in AJ families.

Health care utilization of fine-scale identity by descent clusters in a Los Angeles biobank

“…3a). As reported in [11], [37], [38], we find that Ashkenazi Jews are more likely to be assigned phecodes for ulcerative colitis (log odds ratio: 0.81±0.2, p-value: 6.61e-15), chronic ulcerative colitis (log odds ratio: 0.74±0.23, p-value: 6.88e-10) and regional enteritis (log odds ratio: 1.08±0.20, p-value: 4.23e-27). We additionally observed strong associations for several mental health disorders, including obsessive-compulsive disorder (log odds ratio: 1.13±0.33, p-value: 2.49e-11), eating disorder (log odds ratio: 1.22±0.32, p-value: 1.02e-13), anxiety disorder (log odds ratio: 0.53±0.07, p-value: 8.75e-55), and major depressive disorder (log odds ratio: 0.48±0.1, p-value: 9.02e-23).…”

Increasing rate of a positive family history of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in pediatric IBD patients

“…The rate may be even higher in the Jewish population, that comprises the vast majority of our cohort [6]. In 2018, Schiff et al [22] reported a 40% rate of familial cases of IBD in the Ashkenazi Jewish population in the UK. That high rate may re ect a greater genetic burden for IBD among that population compared to others.…”

Inflammatory bowel disease in Hermansky–Pudlak syndrome: a retrospective single‐centre cohort study

“…Overall, the prevalence of inflammatory bowel disease in patients with HPS was higher than in the general population and in comparable ethnic groups. For example, inflammatory bowel disease is estimated to affect more than 0.3% of the general North American population and 1.2% of the Ashkenazi Jewish population [49,50]. In addition, the prevalence of Crohn's disease and inflammatory bowel disease in Puerto…”