The number of new people being diagnosed with Crohn’s and colitis is rising each year. Symptoms can be very different from one person to the next - some people will have inflammation which gets worse over time whereas in others the inflammation is easily treated. Unfortunately, we don’t know why Crohn’s and colitis starts or what controls this behaviour over time.

Our team of researchers think that studying the behaviour of human cells in the blood and gut, plus studying gut microbes (bacteria, viruses and fungi) at the time of Crohn’s and colitis diagnosis and repeatedly over the first 2 years after diagnosis may help to better understand why everyone’s experience is so different and what makes us so individual.

We hope that doing this will allow us to work out which people most need treatment early after diagnosis, and which treatment to choose. We hope this study in the future will help to make new treatments for Crohn’s and colitis and support people to make personalised choices about their care with their doctors and Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) nurses.

To do this we will recruit up to 2,000 patients who may be diagnosed with IBD.

Why is Open-IBD so important?