Causes and costs of the high incidence of Inflammatory Bowel Disease in the Faroe Islands

The aim of this register-based project entitled “Causes and costs of the high incidence of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases in the Faroe Islands” is to assess the consequences of the high incidence of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in the Faroe Islands and thus to provide specific Faroese statistics related hereto e.g. assessment of the health economic burden of these disorders alongside an in-depth insight into the environmental characteristics of the patients.

The IBD incidence in this archipelago is the highest recorded in the world. The Medical Centre at the National Hospital of the Faroe Islands has gathered nationwide data on all Faroese IBD patients dating back to 1960 and since 2010, also within the Epi-IBD group (www.epi-ibd.org), which is a European epidemiological collaboration. The overall aim of the Faroese IBD cohort is to describe the occurrence, prognosis, and disease course of this high-risk population in the North Atlantic Ocean, which we have shown to be strongly influenced by environmental factors as the incidence decreases among immigrants from the Faroe Islands to Denmark over time and over generations.