Abstract
Longobardi and colleagues examined the effect of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) on employment, using data from 10,891 respondents aged 20 to 64 years from the 1998 cycle of the Canadian National Population Health Survey (NPHS) (1). This sample included 187 (1.7%) subjects who self-reported IBD or a similar bowel disorder. A significantly greater proportion of IBD than non-IBD respondents reported that they were not in the labour force (28.9% versus 18.5%). Even after adjusting for other factors (age group, level of pain, etc), subjects with IBD had a 2.9% higher nonparticipation rate (21.4%). For example, among people not hospitalized within the past year and with no limitation of activities due to pain, IBD subjects were 1.2 times more likely to be unemployed than those without IBD. Subjects who reported high levels of pain had a very high probability of being out of the labour force. Based on Canadian annual compensation data for all employed persons in Canada, and age- and sex-specific prevalence, and incidence rates for IBD, the authors estimated that there are 119,980 IBD patients between the ages of 20 and 64 years in Canada and that this group includes 3479 people who are not in the labour force. This translates into lost wages of $104.2 million, or $868 per IBD patient