inflammatory bowel disease and infections

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) consisting of Crohn´s disease (CD), ulcerative colitis (UC) and inflammatory bowel disease unclassified (IBD-U) is a chronic inflammatory condition that affects the gastrointestinal tract. Compared to the general population, IBD patients are at increased risk of serious infections. To what extent these infections are due to immunosuppressive treatment used to treat the disease or the disease activity per se is hard to disentangle. We aim to shed light on these aspects.