Anywhere from 25 to 40 percent of people with a form of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which includes Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis (UC), have complications outside the gut. And for about 10 percent of people with IBD, those complications include eye problems, which affect people with Crohn’s more often than those with UC.
“The tissues that make up the eye are very similar to tissues in other parts of the body, so inflammatory diseases that affect other organs, such as the bowel in Crohn’s disease, will affect the eye as well,” says Calvin Roberts, MD, an ophthalmologist, volunteer faculty member at Weill Cornell Medicine, and former CEO of the Lighthouse Guild in New York City.
Eye problems in Crohn’s may show up before the gastrointestinal symptoms of inflammation set in — in fact, about 25 percent of people experience such a complication, also known as an extraintestinal manifestation, before they receive a Crohn’s diagnosis.
Here’s what you need to know about specific eye problems associated with Crohn’s.
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