Osteoporosis in pediatric patients suffering from chronic inflammatory bowel disease with and without steroid treatment.

Background: Children and adolescents suffering from inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are at risk of developing osteoporosis as a result of treatment with corticosteroids as well as of nonsteroidal factors like inflammation and malnutrition. To study the impact of these factors on development of osteopathy, we compared the rate of osteoporosis in steroid-naive and steroid-treated pediatric IBD patients.

Methods: In 90 patients (50 girls) with IBD (34 steroid-naive, 53 steroid-treated, 3 not known) aged 8.