About 4.1 million American adults have been told by a doctor that they have Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis, according to new federal survey data, and the two conditions are far from evenly split. Ulcerative colitis is more than twice as common as Crohn's.
The estimate comes from the National Center for Health Statistics, using 2023 and 2024 National Health Interview Survey data. It puts overall inflammatory bowel disease at 1.6% of adults, ulcerative colitis at 1.2%, and Crohn's disease at 0.5%.
