Epidemiology of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases and Quality of Drinking Water assessed by Dissolved Oxygen Levels

The incidence of inflammatory bowel diseases [IBD] has risen over the past decade to become a global issue. Annual incidence rates varied by geographical region with IBD estimates ranging from 10.5 to 46.14 per 100 000 in Europe, 1.37 to 1.5 per 100 000 in Asia and the Middle East, 23.67 to 39.8 per 100 000 in Oceania, 0.21 to 3.67 per 100 000 in South America, and 7.3 to 30.2 per 100 000 in North America. Although it has been studied a lot, it is not understood why it is spreading or how it does it. Key environmental factors implicated in IBD pathogenesis include exposure to tobacco smoking, antibiotics, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, oral contraceptives, infections, agrochemicals, persistent chemicals as PFAS, and ultra-high processed foods. It seems that the etiology of IBD is multifactorial, like many diseases. The probable etiologies have been explored from various points of view, but there have been no results that allow significant progress in both prevention and better therapeutic management of patients. In this paper we describe the consistent inverse correlation between IBD and low levels of dissolved oxygen in the drinking water supplied to the population, and that has consistently gone unnoticed in the numerous works published on the subject. The importance of dissolved oxygen levels in drinking water is greater than we thought, in addition to the possibility that the management of a single parameter (dissolved oxygen levels) has an important impact on both the prevention and therapeutic management of patients, allowing a better prognosis and better quality of life.