Inflammatory bowel disease 23 is a rare inherited form of bowel inflammation that usually begins early in life. Early signs of inflammatory bowel disease 23 can include frequent diarrhea, blood in the stool, belly pain, and poor growth. Inflammatory bowel disease 23 is usually lifelong, and many people need ongoing care from digestive and genetics specialists. Not everyone will have the same experience. Treatment for inflammatory bowel disease 23 focuses on controlling inflammation, supporting nutrition and growth, and preventing serious complications, which can be dangerous without proper care.
How many people live with Inflammatory bowel disease 23?
Worldwide, about 4.9 million people were living with inflammatory bowel disease, or IBD, in 2019, based on the most recent Global Burden of Disease estimate (Global Burden of Disease Study 2019, 2023). In the United States, about 3.1 million adults are living with IBD (CDC, 2024).
Overview
Inflammatory bowel disease 23Symptoms
Inflammatory bowel disease 23 often starts in infancy or early childhood. Signs can include ongoing diarrhea, blood or mucus in the stool, belly pain, poor weight gain, and repeated infections or sores around the anus.
Outlook and prognosis
Inflammatory bowel disease 23 often comes and goes in flares, but many people live active lives with ongoing treatment and checkups. Outlook varies with symptom control and complications such as bowel narrowing, poor growth, or surgery needs.
Causes and risk factors
Inflammatory bowel disease likely results from an overactive immune response in a genetically prone gut. Risk rises with family history, smoking, some infections, certain medicines, and Western-style diets, while stress can worsen flares without being the main cause.
Genetic influences
Genetics matter in Inflammatory bowel disease 23, but they are only part of the picture. Certain genetic variations can raise risk and shape how the immune system behaves, while environment and lifestyle also influence who develops symptoms and how severe they become.
Diagnosis
Diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease starts with symptoms, stool and blood tests. Doctors usually confirm it with colonoscopy and biopsies, and sometimes imaging to check the bowel.
Treatment and drugs
Treatment for inflammatory bowel disease 23 aims to calm gut inflammation, ease flares, and protect nutrition and growth. Many living with inflammatory bowel disease 23 use steroids, immune-targeting medicines, or biologics. Some may also need nutrition support or surgery.
Symptoms
Frequent diarrhea, belly pain, and poor growth can make meals, school, play, and sleep much harder for children living with inflammatory bowel disease 23. Many children with inflammatory bowel disease 23 show signs very early in life, and the early features of inflammatory bowel disease 23 can look like a stomach infection that never fully clears. Because this is a rare inherited form of bowel inflammation, some may also have tiredness, fevers, or painful sores around the anus. Signs vary from person to person and can change over time.
Loose stools can happen many times a day and may be hard to control. In inflammatory bowel disease 23, this can lead to diaper irritation, dehydration, and poor sleep.
Stool may have streaks of bright red blood or look darker than usual, and mucus can appear too. This usually reflects irritation or sores in the bowel.
Cramping, bloating, and an urgent need to use the bathroom are common. Some children eat less because meals seem to trigger pain or quick trips to the toilet.
Inflammatory bowel disease 23 can make it harder for the body to absorb nutrients and keep up with normal growth. Some children gain weight slowly, lose weight, or grow more slowly than expected.
How people usually first notice Inflammatory bowel disease 23?
How inflammatory bowel disease 23 is first noticed often begins in infancy or early childhood, when families and doctors see ongoing digestive problems that do not settle down, such as frequent diarrhea, blood or mucus in the stool, belly pain, or trouble feeding. The first signs of inflammatory bowel disease 23 may also include poor weight gain, slow growth, or irritation around the anus, which can be a clue that the bowel is inflamed rather than dealing with a short-lived stomach bug. Because symptoms can overlap with more common childhood illnesses, it is usually the pattern, symptoms that keep coming back or become severe early in life, that leads doctors to look more closely.
Types of Inflammatory bowel disease 23
No distinct types of Inflammatory bowel disease 23 are widely recognized.
Can I slow down the onset of symptoms?
For inflammatory bowel disease 23, there is no good evidence that lifestyle changes or current medical treatment can reliably slow or prevent the first symptoms, because this is an inherited condition driven mainly by a gene change. Healthy habits like not smoking, eating well, sleeping enough, and keeping up with regular medical care may support overall health and may help with symptom control after the condition begins, but they are not known to delay onset. Research into earlier detection and more targeted treatment is ongoing, so staying connected with a specialist can still be useful even though no approach can promise prevention.
What genetics can tell you about symptoms
For people living with inflammatory bowel disease 23, genetics can give some clues about symptoms because the condition is caused by an inherited gene change, and that change may affect how early bowel inflammation starts and how severe it becomes. Even so, genetics usually cannot predict the exact day-to-day pattern for one person, since symptoms can still vary widely, even among relatives with the same condition. In general, genetic results are most helpful for explaining why symptoms happen and whether doctors should watch for very early-onset or more severe disease.
Causes and risk factors
The exact causes and risk factors for inflammatory bowel disease are still being studied, but the illness often starts when the immune system reacts too strongly to the gut. Genes can increase risk, so inflammatory bowel disease is more common if a parent, brother, sister, or child has it. Changes in gut bacteria and in the lining of the intestines also seem to play a role. Smoking, especially for Crohn's disease, and living in more industrialized environments are among the better-known risk factors. It is rarely just one factor, and the mix matters.
What are the most common causes or risk factors?
Inflammatory bowel disease 23 is thought to be mainly caused by an inherited change in a gene, so the biggest risk factor is family history. This means the condition is usually something people are born with, not something caused by food, stress, or everyday habits. Other things can affect how much gut inflammation someone has, but no common non-genetic cause has been clearly proven for this rare genetic form.
Environmental and biological risk factors
Inflammatory bowel disease, or IBD, usually develops because several risks come together rather than from one single cause. Biological factors such as age, immune activity, and changes in the gut lining can interact with environmental exposures like infections, medications, and the place someone lives. Doctors often group risks into internal (biological) and external (environmental). Looking at the main risk factors for inflammatory bowel disease can help explain why some people develop it while others do not.
IBD is often first diagnosed in the teens, 20s, or 30s, although it can begin later in life as well. Age does not cause the disease by itself, but certain age groups seem more biologically vulnerable to ongoing gut inflammation.
Many people with IBD have an immune system that reacts too strongly inside the digestive tract. If the gut lining is less able to act as a protective barrier, inflammation can start more easily and last longer.
A stomach or intestinal infection can sometimes act as a trigger for IBD in someone who is already vulnerable. This may happen because an infection can disturb the balance of gut bacteria and change how the immune system responds afterward.
Repeated antibiotic use, especially earlier in life, has been linked with a higher chance of developing inflammatory bowel disease in some studies. Antibiotics can shift the normal mix of gut bacteria that helps support a healthy intestinal lining.
Genetic risk factors
Inflammatory bowel disease 23 is linked to inherited changes that affect how the immune system reacts in the gut. In this subtype, the main known genetic link is the TNFSF15 gene, and risk is not destiny—it varies widely between individuals. When people ask about the genetic risk factors for Inflammatory bowel disease 23, the key points are the gene change itself, how it can run in families, and the fact that the same variant can lead to different outcomes.
TNFSF15 variants: Inflammatory bowel disease 23 has been linked to inherited changes in TNFSF15, a gene involved in immune signaling in the bowel. These changes can make ongoing gut inflammation more likely, but they do not guarantee disease.
Family history: Because this genetic risk can be passed down, it may cluster in families. Having close relatives with inflammatory bowel disease can suggest a higher inherited risk, even though the pattern is not always simple.
Different outcomes: The same risk variant can affect people in very different ways. Some never develop bowel disease, while others may develop Crohn disease, ulcerative colitis, or mixed features.
Lifestyle risk factors
Inflammatory bowel disease 23 is an inherited form of intestinal inflammation, so lifestyle habits do not cause it. Even so, how lifestyle affects inflammatory bowel disease 23 can be important because daily habits may change symptom burden, flare frequency, nutrition, and complication risk. The most helpful focus is usually on reducing gut stress, preventing dehydration and malnutrition, and supporting immune and bone health.
Smoking can worsen intestinal inflammation and may increase the risk of more frequent flares, poorer healing, and greater treatment needs. Avoiding tobacco may help reduce disease activity and protect long-term bowel health.
Certain foods may aggravate diarrhea, abdominal pain, bloating, or urgency during active disease, even though diet does not cause this condition. Individualized eating patterns, including enough calories, protein, iron, calcium, vitamin D, and vitamin B12 when needed, can help limit weight loss and nutrient deficiencies.
Ongoing diarrhea can lead to dehydration and electrolyte imbalance, which may worsen fatigue, dizziness, and weakness. Regular fluid intake and replacing losses appropriately can support circulation, kidney function, and recovery during flares.
Moderate exercise may help maintain muscle mass, bone strength, energy, and mood in people living with chronic intestinal inflammation. Activity often needs to be adjusted during flares or severe fatigue so it supports recovery rather than adding physical stress.
Risk prevention
For people living with inflammatory bowel disease 23, there is usually no proven way to prevent the condition itself because it is linked to an inherited genetic change. Prevention is mainly about lowering the chance of flares, infections, poor growth, and other complications through steady medical care and daily habits. Even if you can’t remove all risks, prevention can reduce their impact. Many living with inflammatory bowel disease 23 do best when treatment is tailored early and adjusted over time.
Ongoing follow-up with a gastroenterology team can help catch inflammation early, sometimes before symptoms become obvious. This can lower the risk of bowel damage, hospital stays, and delays in treating early symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease 23.
Taking prescribed treatment as directed is one of the best ways to reduce flares and protect the bowel over time. Skipping doses or stopping on your own can raise the risk of symptoms returning and complications building quietly.
Some people with inflammatory bowel disease 23 may use medicines that weaken immune defenses, so avoiding preventable infections matters. Vaccines, good handwashing, and quick advice for fever or severe diarrhea can help lower that risk.
Good nutrition supports healing, energy, and normal growth, especially in children and teens with inflammatory bowel disease 23. A dietitian may help if eating is hard, weight drops, or certain foods seem to worsen symptoms.
Can you prevent Inflammatory bowel disease 23?
No, inflammatory bowel disease 23 cannot usually be fully prevented, because it is linked to changes in genes that can be passed down in families. Even so, some well-known factors such as smoking can raise the risk or make bowel inflammation worse, so avoiding smoking and getting early care for ongoing stomach or bowel symptoms may help, but they cannot guarantee prevention.
Transmission
Inflammatory bowel disease 23 is not an infection, so it does not spread through coughs, food, water, sex, or everyday contact. People with inflammatory bowel disease 23 cannot pass it to others by being near them, sharing meals, or caring for them.
Instead, inflammatory bowel disease 23 is a genetic condition linked to a change in a gene that may be passed from parent to child, although in some families it can start with a new gene change in the affected child. When people ask about the genetic transmission of inflammatory bowel disease 23, the key point is that it can run in families, but it is not contagious.
When to test your genes
Genetic testing is usually considered if inflammatory bowel disease begins very early in childhood, runs strongly in your family, or comes with unusual infections, poor growth, or other immune problems. In those settings, finding a rare single-gene cause can help guide treatment choices and, sometimes, stem cell transplant evaluation.
Diagnosis
Inflammatory bowel disease is usually diagnosed after ongoing gut symptoms such as belly pain, diarrhea, blood in the stool, weight loss, or fatigue lead to medical testing. It’s natural to worry when symptoms don’t have a clear explanation. The diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease is based on a mix of your symptoms, exam findings, lab tests, stool tests, imaging, and a close look inside the digestive tract.
Doctors ask about your symptoms, how long they have been happening, and whether they come and go or keep getting worse. A detailed family and health history can help show whether inflammatory bowel disease is more likely than an infection, irritable bowel syndrome, or another cause.
Your clinician checks for signs such as belly tenderness, weight loss, mouth sores, skin changes, or joint swelling. They may also look for signs of dehydration or anemia, which can happen when inflammation has been active for a while.
Blood tests can look for anemia, inflammation, poor nutrition, and problems with liver function. These tests cannot confirm inflammatory bowel disease on their own, but they help support the diagnosis and rule out other conditions.
Stool tests help check for infections, hidden blood, and proteins linked to gut inflammation. This is often an early step in how inflammatory bowel disease is diagnosed because it helps separate inflammation from noninflammatory causes of diarrhea.
How is Inflammatory bowel disease 23 diagnosed?
Inflammatory bowel disease 23 is usually diagnosed the same way doctors diagnose inflammatory bowel disease in general: by looking at symptoms, doing an exam, and using blood tests, stool tests, and a scope test such as a colonoscopy to look for inflammation and take tiny tissue samples from the gut lining. Scans such as MRI, CT, or ultrasound may also be used to see how much of the bowel is affected and to rule out other causes. Genetic testing can help confirm the inherited subtype when doctors suspect it, especially if bowel inflammation starts very early in life or runs in the family, but it is only one part of the diagnosis.
Stages of Inflammatory bowel disease 23
Inflammatory bowel disease 23 does not have defined progression stages. This is because it is usually identified by the pattern of symptoms and test results, rather than by a steady step-by-step worsening over time. Doctors usually start with a conversation about bowel symptoms, such as ongoing diarrhea, belly pain, weight loss, or blood in the stool, including possible early symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease 23. Monitoring often involves physical exams, blood and stool tests, and sometimes imaging or a scope test to check for inflammation and see how active the condition is.
Outlook and prognosis
The outlook for inflammatory bowel disease 23 is variable, but many affected people have a chronic, relapsing course that can be severe from infancy or early childhood and often requires close specialist care. Prognosis depends on how much intestinal inflammation can be controlled, the presence of complications such as poor growth, malnutrition, fistulas, or infections, and whether the underlying immune problem can be specifically treated. Some patients improve with intensive medical therapy and nutritional support, while others may need surgery or, in selected cases, hematopoietic stem cell transplantation if the disorder reflects a serious immune-regulation defect. Long-term monitoring is important because ongoing inflammation can impair growth and quality of life and increase the risk of repeated hospitalizations. Mortality is not well defined because this is a rare genetic condition, but deaths can occur in the most severe cases, usually related to overwhelming infection, complications of uncontrolled intestinal disease, or treatment-related complications.
Long-term effects
Inflammatory bowel disease can affect daily life long after a flare settles down. Over time, daily routines may shift because symptoms can come and go, and some people develop complications even during quieter periods. The long-term effects of inflammatory bowel disease vary widely, depending on whether inflammation stays under good control and which part of the gut is involved. Many living with inflammatory bowel disease have long stretches of stability, while others need ongoing monitoring for problems that build slowly over years.
Diarrhea, belly pain, urgency, and fatigue can continue between flares or return off and on over time. For many, symptoms are milder some weeks and more disruptive in others, which can affect work, school, travel, and sleep.
Long-term inflammation can make it harder for the body to absorb iron, vitamin B12, and other nutrients. This can lead to anemia, low energy, weight loss, or slow growth in children and teens.
In some people, repeated inflammation leads to scar tissue that narrows parts of the intestine, called a stricture. This can cause cramping, bloating, nausea, and trouble passing stool, and sometimes it leads to surgery.
Crohn disease, one form of inflammatory bowel disease, can cause abnormal tunnels between the bowel and nearby tissues. These may lead to pain, drainage, infection, or repeated abscesses that need treatment.
How is it to live with Inflammatory bowel disease 23?
Living with inflammatory bowel disease 23 often means planning daily life around an unpredictable gut, with abdominal pain, urgent diarrhea, fatigue, and flare-ups that can interrupt school, work, sleep, meals, and time away from home. Many living with this condition also have to keep close track of medicines, appointments, and nutrition, and some may need hospital care or surgery if inflammation becomes hard to control. This can ripple outward to family and friends, who may help with practical support and adapt plans at short notice, but with good medical care and a strong support system, many people still find ways to build steady routines and protect quality of life.
Treatment and drugs
Inflammatory bowel disease 23 is usually treated by controlling bowel inflammation, easing symptoms such as diarrhea and belly pain, and helping children grow and stay well nourished. Treatment often looks different for each person, but it may include medicines that calm an overactive immune system, nutrition support such as special formulas or tube feeding when needed, and careful treatment of infections or other complications. For some families, the best plan also means regular follow-up with gut, immune, and genetics specialists, since early treatment for inflammatory bowel disease 23 can help limit damage to the intestines. In severe cases, especially when inflammatory bowel disease 23 is part of a broader immune system problem, doctors may consider advanced treatments such as surgery or a stem cell transplant.
Can you cure Inflammatory bowel disease 23?
No, there is no cure for inflammatory bowel disease 23 at this time. Treatment cannot remove the condition, but it can often calm inflammation in the gut, ease symptoms like belly pain and diarrhea, and help prevent flare-ups and long-term problems. Depending on how it affects someone, care may include medicines, nutrition support, and sometimes surgery to treat complications.
Non-drug treatment
Living with inflammatory bowel disease can affect meals, work, sleep, and confidence about leaving home, so treatment often includes more than medicine alone. Non-drug treatments may be recommended to help with symptoms, nutrition, stress, and day-to-day coping, especially during flares or recovery after one. Managing this condition often means combining medical care with practical support that helps protect energy, bowel habits, and quality of life. For many, this can also include support for the early symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease, such as urgent bowel movements, cramping, fatigue, and weight loss.
Food choices do not cause inflammatory bowel disease, but eating plans can help reduce strain on the gut and prevent malnutrition. During flares, some people do better with softer, lower-fiber foods for a time, while others need help from a dietitian to find triggers and keep meals balanced.
A registered dietitian can help with weight loss, vitamin shortages, dehydration, or trouble eating enough. Structured programs, like individualized meal planning, can help people with inflammatory bowel disease get enough calories, protein, iron, calcium, and vitamin D.
Stress does not cause inflammatory bowel disease, but it can make symptoms feel harder to manage and may worsen day-to-day coping. Supportive therapies can include relaxation training, mindfulness, breathing exercises, or cognitive behavioral therapy to help with pain, anxiety, and flare-related stress.
Gentle to moderate activity can improve energy, mood, sleep, bone strength, and overall fitness. Simple routines—like walking or stretching—can have lasting benefits, especially when fatigue or joint pain has made movement harder.
Your genes may have an impact on how drugs work for you
For some people living with inflammatory bowel disease, inherited differences can change how the body handles certain medicines, especially some drugs that calm the immune system, so the same dose may work well for one person but cause side effects or not help enough in another. This can show up in everyday life as one person feeling better quickly while someone else has nausea, unusual tiredness, or blood test changes after starting treatment. Because of this, doctors sometimes use a gene-based test before or during treatment to help choose a safer dose or decide whether a different medicine may be a better fit.
Pharmacological treatments
For many living with inflammatory bowel disease 23, treatment is aimed at calming gut inflammation, easing flares, and helping the bowel heal. There is no single medicine that fits everyone, and doctors usually choose treatment based on symptom severity, colonoscopy findings, and any immune-system features that come with this condition. Not everyone responds to the same medication in the same way. Medicines used for the early symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease 23 are often the same ones used for other forms of inflammatory bowel disease.
Prednisone, prednisolone, and budesonide can quickly lower inflammation during a flare. They are usually used short term because side effects become more likely with longer use.
Mesalamine and sulfasalazine may help some people, especially when inflammation mainly affects the colon. These medicines are not strong enough for everyone, but they can be useful in milder disease.
Azathioprine, 6-mercaptopurine, and methotrexate are used to reduce immune-driven inflammation over time. They tend to work more slowly, so they are often used to help maintain control rather than give fast relief.
Infliximab and adalimumab block a key inflammatory signal called tumor necrosis factor. These medicines are often used for moderate to severe disease or when standard drugs have not helped enough.
Genetic influences
When bowel pain, urgent diarrhea, or rectal bleeding seem to show up in more than one relative, it can point to a strong inherited influence in inflammatory bowel disease 23. This named subtype is linked to changes in or near the MST1 gene, which helps regulate immune activity and healing in the gut lining. Having a gene change doesn’t always mean you will develop the condition. That is one reason early symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease 23 can start at different ages, and why some family members have milder flares while others need more treatment. Because inflammatory bowel disease 23 is a genetically defined form, doctors may review family history and sometimes suggest genetic counseling or testing to better understand risk in relatives.
Is Inflammatory bowel disease 23 genetic?
Genetics matter in Inflammatory bowel disease 23, but they are only part of the picture. Certain genetic variations can raise risk and shape how the immune system behaves, while environment and lifestyle also influence who develops symptoms and how severe they become.
Having a genetic risk is not necessarily a diagnosis
Genetic variants are a normal part of being human and are widely seen in the general population. Most of these variants do not have a direct effect on health and are simply part of natural human diversity. For many genes, having a variant connected with a condition suggests a possible link rather than a certain diagnosis, especially when several genes and environmental factors are involved. In some cases, though, a single well-understood variant in a specific gene is enough to confirm a diagnosis.
Pharmacogenetics—how genetics influence drug effects
When inflammatory bowel disease keeps flaring or does not improve as expected, finding the right medicine can take time because people do not all process the same drug in the same way. Some inherited gene changes affect how the body handles thiopurines, a group of medicines that includes azathioprine and mercaptopurine, and this can raise the risk of serious side effects like very low blood counts unless the dose is adjusted or a different drug is chosen. Genetic testing can sometimes identify how your body may handle these medicines before treatment starts, which is why doctors may suggest genetic testing before thiopurine treatment for inflammatory bowel disease. For newer treatments such as biologics, genetics may play a part in who responds well, but the results are not yet strong enough to choose the best drug for most people based on genes alone. The location and severity of inflammation, other health conditions, and how you have responded to past treatment still matter just as much.
Interactions with other conditions
People living with inflammatory bowel disease 23 may notice that symptoms become harder to sort out when another illness is also present, especially if belly pain, diarrhea, fatigue, or weight loss could have more than one cause. Doctors call it a comorbidity when two conditions occur together. Inflammatory bowel disease can overlap with joint inflammation, skin problems, eye inflammation, and liver or bile duct disease, so a flare in the gut may come with sore joints, painful red eyes, or new rashes. Many living with inflammatory bowel disease 23 also need care that takes anemia, low bone density, or poor nutrition into account, particularly if symptoms have been active for a long time. Because treatment often affects the immune system, infections can matter more, and other autoimmune conditions may also be part of the picture in some families. If there are early symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease 23 along with problems outside the digestive tract, coordinated care between a gut specialist and other doctors can help connect the dots and guide treatment.
How genes can cause diseases
Humans have more than 20,000 genes, each carrying out one or a few specific functions in the body. One gene instructs the body to digest lactose from milk, another tells the body how to build strong bones and another prevents the body's cells from beginning to multiply uncontrollably and developing into cancer. As all of these genes combined are the building instructions for our body, a defect in one of these genes can have severe health consequences.
Through decades of genetic research, we know the genetic code of any healthy/functional human gene. We have also identified that in certain positions on a gene, some individuals may have a different genetic letter from the one you have. We call these hotspots "Genetic Variations" or "Variants" in short. In many cases, studies have been able to show that having the genetic letter "G" in the position makes you healthy, but having the letter "A" in the same position disrupts the gene function and causes a disease. Genopedia allows you to view these variants in genes and summarizes all that we know from scientific research, which genetic letters (Genotype) have good or bad consequences on your health or on your traits.
What other conditions can cause similar symptoms to Inflammatory bowel disease 23?
Other conditions that can look a lot like inflammatory bowel disease 23 include other types of inflammatory bowel disease, especially Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, as well as bowel infections that can cause ongoing diarrhea, belly pain, and blood in the stool. Celiac disease, irritable bowel syndrome, and in some children certain immune system problems can also cause similar symptoms. Because the overlap can be strong, doctors usually need stool tests, blood tests, scans, and sometimes a scope test to tell them apart.
History
People living with inflammatory bowel disease 23 often face a long path to getting the right name for what is happening, especially when symptoms begin early in life or do not follow the usual pattern of more common bowel conditions. In the past, many children and families were first told they had severe inflammation of the gut without a clear explanation for why it was happening.
Initially understood only through symptoms, later this condition became easier to recognize as doctors compared patterns across families and across age groups. Early reports focused on ongoing diarrhea, poor growth, belly pain, and inflammation that could be hard to control with standard treatment. As medical science evolved, specialists began to notice that some people had a form of inflammatory bowel disease that behaved differently from typical Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis, often starting very young and sometimes coming with problems outside the digestive tract.
That shift mattered. It helped move care away from a one-size-fits-all approach and toward a closer look at the cause in each individual. In recent years, researchers have linked inflammatory bowel disease 23 to an underlying genetic cause, which helped explain why some children developed severe disease so early and why the illness could run a different course from other forms of bowel inflammation. Knowing this history also helps explain why testing may be recommended when the early symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease 23 appear in infancy or childhood, or when the condition is unusually severe. Today, the condition is better recognized than it once was, which can help families reach more targeted care sooner.