What are the symptoms of inflammatory bowel diseases?
General symptoms of inflammatory bowel diseases can include chronic diarrhea, abdominal cramps or pain, fever, and blood or mucus in the stool. The individual may lose weight and have little desire to eat. Other parts of the body can be affected when the disease flares up: there can be inflammation in joints, eyes, or skin, for example. Episodes of abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea related to inflammatory bowel disease can be difficult to distinguish from simple viral infections or other benign conditions, such as irritable bowel syndrome. Occasionally IBD is misdiagnosed until symptoms become prominent. Other types of colitis can occur in older people and can be mistaken for one of the chronic IBDs. These include infectious colitis caused by overgrowth of bacteria or occurring as an adverse effect of chemotherapy for cancer, or colitis resulting from the use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as aspirin. Also common in the elderly is ischemic colitis, caused by l
