Chinese research into severe ulcerative colitis has increased in quantity and complexity

Luo, Cheng-Xin; Wen, Zhong-Hui; Zhen, Yu; Wang, Zhu-Jun; Mu, Jing-Xi; Zhu, Min; Ouyang, Qin; Zhang, Hu

There was a more than tenfold increase in the number of SUC patients reported in Chinese medical journals over the most recent 15 years. A male predominance in SUC incidence was observed in our data, with a male to female ratio of 1.38, similar to the value of 1.34 reported by a multi-centre study in China [15] . However, male and female patients were reported to be equally affected in 10218 UC patients reported in Chinese medical literature from 1981 to 2000, with a male to female ratio of 1.09 [17] . A similar gender distribution for disease has also been noted in other Asian and western countries [26] . One hypothesis for this observation is that male patients with UC may have a more severe disease course since male gender has been reported as a risk factor for colectomy [8, 28] . Further, more detailed, population-based studies are required to validate these data.