Ulcerative Colitis Vs Crohn's Disease - Brief Discussion

Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn's disease can be together termed as irritable bowel syndrome. However certain dissimilarities they posses help physicians diagnosis and treat the diseases appropriately.

Commonly referred to, as irritable bowel syndrome, Ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease are the two most common bowl diseases. Your small intestine and colon get mostly affected by these two diseases. They may bare a lot of similarities in the symptoms that include pain in the abdomen, diarrhea, fatigue, loss of weight and anemia, but there are some significant differences as well that let the physicians distinguish between the diseases.

The common aspects of the diseases are as follows:
?? Almost 10-14 people in every 100,000 people get affected by the irritable bowel syndrome.
?? They mainly affect the Caucasian and Ashkenazi Jew population i.e., these two diseases are mostly seen in the advanced and developed countries.
?? The main reason for both the diseases seems to be the lesser amount of parasites in the intestine that led to the decreased fitness level of the enteric immune system.
?? One of the significant treatments for the diseases includes Trichuria Tricuriasis parasites that are injected into the intestine to reduce the symptoms of the diseases.

There are many other significant similarities as well. But there are also some differences that mainly help the physicians with the diagnosis of Ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease.

Some of the significant differences are as follows:

?? Crohn's disease usually doesn't affect the rectum but Ulcerative colitis doesn't spare it.
?? If you look into the biopsy results you would find characteristic noncaseating granulomas for Crohn's disease while in the case of UC you would find crypt abscesses.
?? UC mainly attacks the mucosa and sub mucosa of the GI tract while Crohn's mainly causes inflammation to all three layers of the GI tract. The latter mainly causes perforation to the colonic wall that can be truly dangerous.
?? Crohn's disease is also responsible for cobblestone appearance and a thick bowel wall due to inflammation and regrowth of the colonic wall. UC is mainly responsible for appearance of pseudo polyps as a result of indentations caused by the ulcerations present in the GI tract.

Usually an X-Ray is used by pathologists to distinguish between the Crohn's disease and the Ulcerative colitis so that the physicians can easily treat the patients with proper diagnosis.

Ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease may bare a lot of similarities and also a lot of dissimilarities, but proper diagnosis of both of them is extremely necessary, as both require difference methods of treatments.