A 1.8m-tall Taipei man in his 20s who suffered from diarrhea for six years so badly that his weight fell to 56kg was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis.
The patient said he began suffering from a fever, frequent bouts of diarrhea and blood in his stool about six years ago and he often took gastrointestinal drugs, but the symptoms did not get any better.
He was finally taken to an emergency room after he fainted in a public toilet.
Digestive Endoscopy Society of Taiwan director-general Wang Hsiu-po (王秀伯) said inflammatory bowel disease is a disorder of the gastrointestinal tract that can be caused by an abnormal response by the body’s immune system and the most common forms are Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
He said the common symptoms of Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis are blood in the stool, abdominal pain and diarrhea — often more than 10 times a day — and if the condition is not controlled with proper medical treatment it can develop into an intestinal perforation or blockage, which would require surgery to remove the diseased colon.
National Taiwan University Hospital gastroenterologist Tu Chia-hung (涂佳宏) said ulcerative colitis often occurs in people aged between 20 and 40, and while the exact cause of the disease remains unknown, suspected factors include inherited genes and a dysregulation of the mucosal immune response.
A study has suggested that people with ulcerative colitis are six times more likely to develop colorectal cancer and if the ulcerative colitis repeatedly occurs for a long period of time, the cancer rate can increase to nearly 20 times that of those without the disease, he said.
Tu said if people suffer from repeated symptoms similar to those from acute gastroenteritis or irritable bowel syndrome, they should seek medical care and have an endoscopy for early diagnosis and treatment.
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