Pregnancy-Related Beliefs and Concerns of Inflammatory Bowel Disease Patients Modified After Accessing E-Health Portal

Objective: Poor inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)-specific reproductive knowledge is associated with concerns and medication noncompliance. Having shown an educational portal can improve knowledge, we evaluated its effectiveness for addressing IBD patients' reproductive and medication concerns.

Methods: Adult IBD participants (aged 18 to 45 years) were invited to access an e-health portal providing information on heritability, fertility, surgery, pregnancy outcomes, delivery, postpartum, and breastfeeding in the context of IBD and IBD medications. At pre-, post-, and 6+-month postintervention, participants completed a questionnaire on IBD-specific pregnancy concerns, medication concerns from the Beliefs About Medicines Questionnaire (BMQ), and medication adherence via the Medication Adherence Rating Scale (MARS). The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to compare median differences between scores (95% confidence).

Results: Demographics for 78 (70.3%) participants completing postintervention questionnaires: median age 29.3 (interquartile range: 25.6 to 32.9) years; 54 (69.2%) Crohn's disease; 21 (26.9%) ulcerative colitis; 63 (80.3%) females, 5 (7.9%) pregnant; and 19 (30.2%) previously pregnant. Postintervention, the median number of reproductive concerns decreased from 3 to 1, and remained stable 6+ months later ( < 0.001*). The median BMQ score decreased from 28 to 25, and remained stable 6+ months later ( = 0.032*). Participants adherent to medications increased from 82.4% to 87.8% postintervention ( = 0.099).

Conclusion: Using an e-health portal may potentially reduce IBD-specific reproductive and medications concerns. An e-health portal is feasible as one component of managing IBD patient's reproductive and medication concerns during preconception and pregnancy.