Insufficient Knowledge and Vaccination Practice of Inflammatory Bowel Disease Patients in the People's Republic of China

BACKGROUND: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients are at risk for HBV and varicella, which makes vaccination an important role. AIM: To assess knowledge and vaccination rate of Chinese IBD patients and find the influencing factors. METHODS: An online anonymous questionnaire was distributed to IBD patients through www.wjx.cn in the People's Republic of China during October 2019 to February 2020. The Kappa value and multivariate analysis were used to analyze the data using SPSS 25.0. RESULTS: Among 900 participants, 746 (82.9%) hadreceived immunosuppressive treatment. Only 25 (2.78%) patients thought that they had sufficient information on vaccination, and 311 (34.6%) patients remembered being reminded about vaccination by their doctors before. The self-reported vaccination rate for hepatitis B was 125/666 (18.8%), and for varicella 44/671 (6.6%). Information from doctors was positively associated with vaccination status of hepatitis B (odds ratio [OR]=4.61, 95% confidence interval [Cl: 2.73–7.76], p<0.001) and varicella (OR=4.93, 95%Cl :2.02–12.05, p<0.001). The patients whose duration of IBD diagnosis was more than 2 years (OR=0.37, 95% Cl: 0.16–0.87, p=0.022) and those older than 38 years (OR=0.37, 95% Cl: 0.14–1.00, p=0.0497) were negatively related with the status of varicella vaccination. CONCLUSION: Vaccination-related knowledge level in IBD patients appeared to be low and the rate of vaccination of both hepatitis and varicella was way below the recommended level. Proper education of both IBD patients and gastroenterologists in the People's Republic of China is needed.