Idiopathic Ulcerative Colitis Beginning after the Age of Fifty

Abstract

THE general concept of idiopathic ulcerative colitis as a disease occurring predominantly in the second and third decades of life must be modified in the light of accumulating evidence that the disorder is seen with significant frequency both in childhood and in the later years of life. It is not a clinical rarity to observe an elderly person with a reactivation of an ulcerative colitis that had its initial onset during the earlier decades. Quite distinct from such patients are those whose symptoms of colitis appeared for the first time after the age of fifty. A careful review of the . . .