The Lothian Inflammatory Bowel Disease Registry

The Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBDs) cause progressive damage to the gut, though who develops the disease and why is not known. Likewise, some patients have severe disease and others have mild disease, despite having the same symptoms at diagnosis. We therefore want to understand the reasons for this and have identified all the patients with IBD around Edinburgh. This involved using many different information sources, which we now wish to combine into a single registry of patients. By looking at those patients with severe and mild disease we may be able to identify differences between them that are not currently known. If we can identify these differences early in a patient’s diagnosis, this will allow us to target treatments more appropriately.