A major genetic study of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has found that it is genetically similar in both Europeans and non-Europeans, suggesting that drugs developed for the condition could be used worldwide.

With IBD, the digestive system is impaired and the gut becomes inflamed and swollen. The most common types of IBD are Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.

Until now, genetic studies on IBD have tended to focus on European people, so this marks the first genetic study to include diverse populations, including people of Indian, Asian and Iranian descent.

DNA samples from almost 100,000 people worldwide were included.

The study revealed that the genetic effects on disease risk are consistent across diverse populations. This means that if a drug is developed based on genetic studies in one population, the chances are this drug will work on other populations too.

"In our study we found little difference in the genetic risk of IBD across the populations we studied. This is a very important finding because it suggests that biological lessons learned by studying the genetics of IBD will be relevant globally," the researchers said.

They noted that they were also able to detect 38 additional parts of the genome - the genetic material of an organism - that can influence a person's susceptibility to IBD. They believe they made this discovery as a result of the higher number of samples they used, rather than the fact that they had used non-European samples.

"This study demonstrates the importance of collecting trans-ethnic data on IBD, firstly because any increase in the number of samples improves our ability to identify regions of the genome influencing disease risk, and secondly because we can gain new insights into the biology underlying IBD by comparing results across the diverse populations," they commented.

They are hoping that this study will lead to the identification of new drug targets.

"The finding that the biology underlying IBD is consistent across populations is hugely important. It tells us that we can use insights from genetic studies of IBD to develop globally relevant drugs with the potential to improve disease management around the world," they added.

Details of these findings are published in the journal, Nature Genetics.

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