What symptoms are experienced by IBD patients?
The most common symptom of both UC and CD is diarrhea, sometimes severe, that may require frequent visits to a toilet (in some cases up to 20 or more times a day). Abdominal cramps are often present, the severity of which may be correlated with the degree of diarrhea present. Blood may also appear in the stools, especially with UC. Fever, fatigue, and loss of appetite may accompany these symptoms (with consequent weight loss). At times, some UC and CD patients experience constipation during periods of active disease. In CD this can result from a partial obstruction usually of the small intestine. In UC constipation is most often a consequence of inflammation of the rectum (also known as proctitis); the colon has a nervous reaction and stasis of stool occurs upstream . Inflammation can affect gut nerves in such a way as to make the patient feel that there is stool present ready to be evacuated when there actually is not. That results in the symptom known as tenesmus where there is an un
