Digestive Disease in Chronic Inflammatory Diseases in Children (About 10 Cases)

Introduction: Digestive involvement is not uncommon during chronic inflammatory diseases in children, it may be just digestive manifestations other than other systemic signs or association of two different pathologies with a common immunological terrain.

Objective: To recognize the different types of digestive involvement encountered during chronic inflammatory diseases in children and to discuss the frequency of association of digestive involvement with chronic inflammatory diseases in children .

Materials and Methods: Retrospective study involving 10 children with chronic inflammatory diseases with digestive involvement collected at the department of pediatrics IV and the consultation of pediatric rheumatology of the children's hospital of Rabat over a period of 17 years (2001-2018).

Results: Our series includes 7 female and 3 male children.

The average age of our patients at the time of diagnosis of JIA or SLE is 10 years and the average age of the digestive involvement is 07 years.

The types of digestive involvement found were diverse: Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis and celiac disease.

The frequency of digestive involvement in chronic inflammatory diseases in our series is 1.58%. The incidence of association of juvenile idiopathic arthritis with IBD is 1.08% and with celiac disease is 0.4%, while the frequency of association of systemic lupus with celiac disease is 2.8%.

Conclusion: There is a very strong link between digestive involvement and chronic inflammatory diseases, The common etiopathogenic mechanisms that explain this link are not yet well defined, but genetic predisposition seems to play an important role in these associations, as well as environmental factors such as long exposure to gluten, for celiac disease.