Research

Hormonal

Obesity in IBD patients is associated with altered pharmacokinetics of biological therapies, leading to faster drug clearance, lower trough concentrations, and potentially reduced treatment efficacy.

If you take biological injections for IBD and are obese, your body might process the drug faster than a lean person's, making it less effective. You should discuss this with your doctor. They might monitor your drug levels more closely or adjust your dose to ensure you get the full benefit of the treatment.

LimitedSupportsMEDIUM confidence
Data from other autoimmune diseases suggest that obesity causes a suboptimal response to therapy, possibly by fast clearance of biologicals causing low trough concentrations... obesity poses technical challenges to colorectal surgery... patients with IBD, obesity, and Clostridium difficile had an increased risk of colectomy...
Stephan C. Bischoff et al. · United European Gastroenterology Journal · 2022

Why this rating

Based on retrospective studies and mechanistic hypotheses from other autoimmune diseases.

Source

European guideline on obesity care in patients with gastrointestinal and liver diseases – Joint European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism / United European Gastroenterology guideline

Stephan C. Bischoff et al. · United European Gastroenterology Journal · 2022

DOI 10.1002/ueg2.12280

clinical_guidelineCited 51×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

This is one finding among thousands. Every one is graded and traced to its source, so you can see what the evidence actually supports. Browse the research →