The influence of sleep factors and dietary habits on the disease pattern of ulcerative colitis patients with long and short disease courses – a multicentre cross-sectional analysis

Abstract

Background

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a disease characterized by chronic relapsing-remitting inflammatory disorders and is associated with environmental changes.

Aim

To explore the disease patterns of Chinese UC patients and to determine controllable related environmental factors.

Methods

This multicentre cross-sectional study was performed using a questionnaire survey. Data on clinical characteristics and environmental factors were collected. Patients with a disease course ≥5 years were defined as the long course group, and those with a disease course < 5 years were defined as the short course group.

Results

A total of 588 effective questionnaires were collected. The proportion of the chronic continuous pattern was the highest among patients with a long disease course (46.8%), and in patients with a short disease course, the proportion of the active to remission pattern was the highest (53.3%). In patients with a long disease course, a higher proportion of patients with adequate sleep was found in the active to remission pattern than in the chronic intermittent (72.1% vs. 43.3%, p = 0.008) and chronic continuous (72.1% vs. 52.4%, p = 0.016) patterns. In patients with a short disease course, the frequency of shellfish and shrimp was higher in the chronic continuous pattern group than in the active to remission pattern group (P = 0.001 and 0.017 respectively).

Conclusions

For early diagnosis patients, dietary guidance should be actively carried out. With the prolongation of the disease course, attention should be given to the sleep quality of patients.

KEY MESSAGES

1. 1.UC exhibits various disease patterns, which may be associated with differences in patient prognosis and treatment response.

2. 2.Environmental factors, especially sleep and dietary factors, correlated strongly with disease patterns, which varied in different disease courses.

3. 3.Early diagnosis patients should receive active dietary guidance, while patients with a prolonged disease course require attention to their sleep quality and appropriate drug interventions when necessary.

Keywords:

• Ulcerative colitis
• disease pattern
• sleep
• dietary habits

Author contributions

Mingyue Guo, Xueli Ding, Yanbo yu, Linglin Tian, Jun Shen, Weiyang Zheng, and Huijun Shu performed the data collection, statistical analyses and wrote the manuscript. Mingyue Guo, Gechong Ruan, Xiaoyin Bai, Lingjuan Jiang, and Hong Yang participated in designing this study and revising the draft. Hong Yang and Xiaolan Zhang supervised this study and revised the draft. All authors approved the final submitted version.

Ethical approval and consent to participate

This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Peking Union Medical College Hospital (No: ZS-3563D), and informed consent was obtained from all participants.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data used during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

The Capital Health Research and Development of Special Foundation (2022-2-4014), National Key R&D Program of China (2023YFC2507302), CAMS Innovation Fund for Medical Sciences (2022-I2M-C&T-B-011), National High-Level Hospital Clinical Research Funding (2022-PUMCH-C-018), National Key Clinical Specialty Construction Project (ZK108000), and National Natural Science Foundation of China (81970495). National Key Research and Development Program of China.