Chronic Conditions and Their Age of Onset Predict Health Trajectory in IBD

MONDAY, March 24, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Among people with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), conditions developed at or before age 60 years and their age of onset are important for predicting premature death, according to a study published online March 24 in CMAJ, the journal of the Canadian Medical Association.

Gemma Postill, from the University of Toronto, and colleagues examined premature death (age younger than 75 years) among people with IBD and identified patterns between multimorbidity and premature death among decedents with IBD using administrative health data for people with IBD who died between 2010 and 2020. Statistical and machine learning models were developed to predict premature death from the presence of 17 chronic conditions and patient age at diagnosis.

The researchers found that all models showed strong performance, with areas under the receiver operating curve (AUC) ranging from 0.81 to 0.95. The model that incorporated age at diagnosis for each chronic condition developed at or before 60 years was the best performing (AUC, 0.95). Young ages of diagnosis for mood disorder, other mental health disorders, osteoarthritis and other arthritis types, and hypertension, as well as male sex, were salient features for predicting premature death.

“Among decedents with IBD, machine learning models can accurately predict premature death associated with non-IBD comorbidities, with stronger performance for models trained on early-life conditions (age ≤60 years), suggesting these may be more important in determining one”s health trajectory,” the authors write.

Abstract/Full Text