A meta-analysis of the risk of osteoporotic fractures in inflammatory bowel disease

Abstract

Background. There are a variety of perspectives on the risk of osteoporotic fractures in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and few thorough assessments that are pertinent. Objectives. We conducted a meta-analysis to assess the risk of osteoporotic fractures in IBD. Materials and methods. A systematic literature search up to September 2022 was performed, and 1,158,982 subjects participated in the baseline trials of the selected studies. A total of 261,829 patients had IBD, while 897,153 were controls. Odds ratio (OR) and mean difference (MD) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) were calculated to measure the risk of osteoporotic fractures in IBD patients using contentious and dichotomous approaches with a random or fixed influence model. Results. The presence of IBD resulted in significantly higher frequency of osteoporotic fractures (OR: 1.42, 95% CI: 1.21–1.66, p < 0.001) compared to controls. Nevertheless, no significant differences in terms of osteoporotic fractures were found between ulcerative colitis (OR: 2.79, 95% CI: 0.88–8.87, p = 0.08) and Crohn’s disease (OR: 1.84, 95% CI: 0.81–4.18, p = 0.14) compared to controls. Conclusions. This study found a strong correlation between the risk of osteoporotic fractures and inflammatory bowel disease. The small number of studies in certain comparisons requires care when analyzing the results.