How have treatment patterns for patients with inflammatory bowel disease changed in Asian countries?

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 275 gy of IBD, according to the 2019 Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study, from 1990 to 2019, age-standardized prevalence increased most rapidly in East Asia and high-income Asia-Pacific regions. According to the healthcare costs, van Linschoten et al. assessed the cost of illness of IBD according to each continent including Asia, Europe, North America, and Oceania from 1985 to 2018. The healthcare costs were increasing on all continents, and the cost trend is primarily attributable to an increase in medication costs. Although costs in Asia were lower than in Europe and North America, but no studies from Asia or Oceania were eligible for this analysis at that time period. In summary, it is essential to understand treatment patterns for IBD in Asian countries, because of rapid increase of IBD in Asia due to Westernization, changes in prescription patterns in the West over time, and unique characteristics between the East and the West. The organizing committee of the Asian Organization for Crohn’s and Colitis (AOCC) reported first web-based survey results for the current status of IBD management conducted by 353 Asian medical doctors from Korea, China, Japan, India, Hon Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, Philippines, and Indonesia in the 2nd annual AOCC meeting in 2014. For mild to moderate UC and mild to moderate Crohn’s disease (CD), 5-aminosalicylic acid treatment were common first line therapy in Asian countries. For steroid-refractory acute severe UC, most physicians selected anti-tumor necrosis factor (TNF) agents followed by cyclosporine, on the contrary, Japanese pISSN 1598-9100 • eISSN 2288-1956 https://doi.org/10.5217/ir.2023.00061 Intest Res 2023;21(3):275-276