Pathophysiology of Inflammatory Bowel Disease

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Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a disorder that comprises of a chronic intestinal inflammatory. There are two different types of inflammatory bowel disease that include ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease (CD) which generally involve abdominal pain, fatigue, severe diarrhea and weight loss (Kim & Cheon, 2017). IBD is caused by environmental and genetic factors, but also, it is thought to be idiopathic. Inflammatory bowel disease occurs in the gastrointestinal tract which is the central of the immune system, where adaptive and innate immune systems are composed in complex interactions with the intestinal microbes during homeostatic conditions. According to a traditional view of IBD pathogenesis, intestinal inflammatory is facilitated by Th1 and Th2 cells of the developed immune system (Kim & Cheon, 2017). Nonetheless, the recent studies claim that activation of Th17 cells, as well as Th17 imbalance, are significant components that result in the development of intestinal inflammation (Kim & Cheon, 2017). Also, innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) are said to be pathogenic effector lymphocytes in inflammatory bowel disease. Th17 inhibition can help minimize the growth of acute colitis thus reducing inflammation. Accordingly, the understudy compares the IBD pathophysiological changes in pediatric and geriatric patients. Also, it describes the types of drugs used to treat IBD symptoms, how they affect various body systems in pediatric and geriatric patients and appropriate measure that can reduce any negative effects. Finally, it explains how pediatric and geriatric patients can be educated on inflammatory bowel disorder and how medication adherence can be promoted.
IBD Pathophysiological Changes in Pediatric and Geriatric Patients
Inflammatory bowel disease is recognized as a significant cause of gastrointestinal disease in adults as well as children. Nearly twenty percent of IBD patients develop symptoms during their childhood and approximately five percent of the patients are diagnosed before 10 years of age (Kim & Cheon, 2017). Accordingly, twenty-five percent of children have a genetic history of inflammatory bowel disease. Pediatric patients, in this case, present children below the age of fifteen years while geriatric patients represent elderly patients. However, inflammatory bowel disease is characterized with diverse phenotypic differences that include disease location, disease type, disease behavior, genetically attributable risk, and gender preponderance among children compared to adult-onset (Kim & Cheon, 2017). Among the pediatric patients, IBD comes as a result of dysregulated mucosal an immune response to intestinal microflora. Also, pediatric patients present classic symptoms that include abdominal pain, weight loss, bloody diarrhea, but some can present non-classic symptoms like anemia, poor growth or even extraintestinal manifestations (Kim & Cheon, 2017). In comparison to pediatric patients, genetic aspects contribute less to geriatric patients’ pathogenesis. The effect of aging of human gut microbiota as well as its balance particularly among the elderly people’s immune system is related to the developm...