Cure8 research brief
Why This Matters
Faecal urgency is a frequent, disabling symptom in Crohn's disease that was common in this cohort and tied to poorer quality of life, mental-health burden, and more healthcare use over one year.
Who Should Pay Attention
Adults with Crohn's disease, clinicians managing symptom burden and mental health in IBD, and researchers studying symptom mechanisms and patient-centred outcomes.
Study Snapshot
What To Know
This single-centre observational study of 158 adults with Crohn's disease found that 69% reported clinically relevant faecal urgency.
Urgency severity did not align with standard measures of inflammation or with rectal/distal disease in primary analyses, but it did correlate with higher anxiety and depressive symptoms, lower SIBDQ quality-of-life scores, and greater work productivity loss.
The authors followed patients for 52 weeks and observed that higher urgency severity was associated with increased odds of emergency room admission in an exploratory analysis. These results support a multifactorial model for urgency, where psychobiological factors and healthcare use matter alongside—but are not fully explained by—inflammation.
If you experience persistent urgency, consider discussing both inflammatory assessment and symptom-centered/supportive strategies (mental-health support, pelvic-floor or continence therapies) with your care team.
Keep In Mind
This is a single-centre observational study with exploratory analyses; urgency was measured by patient-reported numeric rating scale and disease activity by clinical, biochemical, endoscopic and ultrasound assessments. The finding that urgency did not correlate with inflammatory measures suggests non-inflammatory contributors, but causality cannot be inferred.
Source Details
Review the original publication for the complete reporting, methods, and context.
This Cure8 brief is based on source text from the linked article. Cure8 is informational only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.