Body Mass Index Is Associated with Inflammatory Bowel Disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

BackgroundPrior work suggested that patients with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) have lower body mass index (BMI) than controls and patients with lower BMI have more serious complications.GoalThe study was aimed to find relationship between BMI in patients with and without IBD, investigate effects of medicine therapy and disease stages on patients’ BMI.MethodsPotentially eligible studies were identified through searching PubMed, Cochrane and Embase databases. Outcome measurements of mean BMI and the number of patients from each study were pooled by a random-effect model. Publication bias test, sensitivity analysis and subgroup analysis were conducted.ResultsA total of 24 studies containing 1442 patients and 2059 controls were included. Main results were as follows: (1) BMI in Crohn’s disease (CD) patients was lower than that in health controls (-1.88, 95% CI -2.77 to -1.00, PP = 0.57); (3) Both CD and UC patients in active phase showed significantly greater BMI difference compared with controls than those in remission (CD patients: remission: -2.25, 95% CI -3.38 to -1.11; active phase: -4.25, 95% CI -5.58 to -2.92, P = 0.03; UC patients: remission: 0.4, 95% CI -2.05 to 2.84; active phase: -5.38, -6.78 to -3.97, P = 0.001).ConclusionsBMI is lower in CD patients; medical therapy couldn’t improve BMI of IBD patients; the state of disease affects BMI of CD patients and UC patients.