Microscopic colitis is a colitis that is not one of the classic inflammatory bowel disease, uncommon (but not rare), which affects mostly older adults, and this causes watery diarrhea corniculate character. It is contained in collagenous and lymphocytic colitis the highest occurrence is between 60 and 70 years of age and prevalent in women. We do not know with certainty the cause.
Symptomatology
In western countries, a rather large percentage (around 4% -5%) of elderly people is aimed at Medical problems of chronic diarrhea.
This situation is mainly women who experience recurrent watery diarrhea even at night, diffuse abdominal pain, weight loss and easy fatigability. Difficult to these annoying symptoms associated with dehydration, while the urgent need to defecate often results in incontinence episodes and reduces quality of life, eventually making it strenuous to deal with normal daily tasks and social relations.
Often these symptoms are interpreted as a surface that inflammatory bowel disease syndrome colon irritable. A delayed diagnosis of the disease often contributes the report of a colonoscopy, which describes a normal-appearing colonic mucosa for all characters and is therefore, not accompanied by biopsies.
Occasionally, patients with microscopic colitis have comorbidity, rheumatoid arthritis, such as thyroid disorders and / or diabetes. Sometimes the diarrhea in patients with diabetes identified myenteric plexus nerve injury should the disease.
A bile acid malabsorption can coexist and aggravate the symptoms.