1. Is there a link between inflammatory bowel disease and the metabolic syndrome? Hester Franks Academic F2 Supervisors Professors Hawkey and Macdonald

2. Background and hypothesis Methods Results to date

3. Background and hypothesis Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) Crohns disease (CD) Ulcerative colitis (UC) Metabolic syndrome Genetic predisposition to both conditions There seem to be an increasing number of obese patients in IBD clinics. Is it possible that in the obese patients it is their obesity/the metabolic syndrome rather than these polymorphisms which predisposes them to IBD?

4. Methods 3 groups CD BMI>28 CD BMI<23 Controls BMI>28 2 parts to study Genetic analysis for SNPs & baseline metabolic analysis Detailed analysis of fasting and postprandial metabolic state

5. Results So far 167 UC patients 110 CD patients Healthy volunteers being recruited by advertisement No gene/metabolic data yet

6. BMI distributions of UC and CD

7. Conclusions to date There does seem to be an overweight subgroup in CD +/- UC SNP analysis may give us evidence that some of the overweight patients have IBD as a manifestation of the metabolic syndrome