COVID-19 and Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Lessons Learned, Practical Recommendations, and Unanswered Questions

On March 11, 2020 the World Health Organization declared the 2019 novel coronavirus (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 [SARS-CoV-2]) epidemic a global pandemic. Physicians, scientists, and patients scrambled to gain an understanding of the implications of this dire situation, and societies and organizations tried to provide guidance of best practices and precautions. In the inflammatory bowel disease community (IBD), the International Organization for the study of IBD (IOIBD) convened their expert members and performed a RAND panel assessment to develop recommendations for patients and providers. Others developed an international open registry to collect data about patients with IBD who developed Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19), the Surveillance Epidemiology of COVID-19 Under Research Exclusion (SECURE-IBD), in order to collect evidence on how COVID-19 impacted IBD patients. To date, SECURE-IBD has amassed 3,493 cases with outcomes3 and published initial analyses. In addition, there were multiple articles published with individual or multi-center experiences, city or regional experiences, and many case reports about IBD or immunemediated disease outcomes. Separately, there was significant activity by translational and basic scientists working to define and describe the pathophysiology of SARS-CoV-2 infections.