- Environmentally triggered
- Transmural involvement
- Can affect anywhere in GI tract mouth-to-anus
- Smoking and appendectomy increase risk
- Northern Europeans and North Americans
- Peak onset 15-30
- Sub-acute symptoms, along a spectrum from mild to severe
- Diarrhea→ though can be less prominent than with UC
- Nocturnal diarrhea
- Mucous and sometimes bloody stools
- Cramps, constipation
- Fatigue and feeling poorly overall
- Fistulas, bowel obstruction
- Extra-Intestinal: skin disorders, joint pain, low back/hip pain (ankylosing spondylitis/scroiliitis), eye/visual sx (episcleritis, scleritis, uveitis), RUQ pain/jaundice (primary sclerosing cholangitis)
- DVT: risk markedly increased w/IBD flair, immobility and/or hospitalization
- Sometimes abdominal mass
- Peri-rectal disease (fissure, fistulas, ulcers)
- Erythema nodosum
- Pyoderma gangrenosa
- Peripheral arthritis
- Low back, SI joint pain
- RUQ pain/jaundice
- Eye pain, redness, decline in vision