Down's syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease: is there a real link?

Down's syndrome (DS) is a genetic disease that has been associated with several immune and autoimmune diseases, including digestive and liver diseases, like celiac disease, autoimmune chronic hepatitis and sclerosing cholangitis.Despite in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) pathogenesis, genetics and immune mechanism play an important role, the association among DS and IBD has been poorly studied. Data about IBD diagnosis in DS patients is very scarce with only some individual case-reports. We report three cases of DS patients diagnosed of IBD and we discuss the possible association of these two entities.