Predictive Factors for Differentiating Between Crohn's Disease and Intestinal Tuberculosis in Koreans

OBJECTIVES: A differential diagnosis between intestinal tuberculosis (ITB) and Crohn's disease (CD) is challenging. The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical, endoscopic, and histological features and to create a predictive score model for differentiating CD and ITB. METHODS: In total, 261 patients, 99 with ITB and 162 with CD, were recruited from seven tertiary centers from 2005 to 2013 and reviewed retrospectively. For the creation of a validated model, parameters were selected by univariate logistic regression and receiver operating characteristic curve analyses. Then, the prediction model was established on the basis of beta-coefficients of the multivariate logistic regression. For the validation of the model, the same regression equation was tested on the other group. RESULTS: Age, diarrhea, ring-shaped ulcer, longitudinal ulcer, sigmoid involvement, suspicious radiological pulmonary tuberculosis, and gender were selected as the factors for a seven-marker model. In the seven-marker model of the validation data set, the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value with a cutoff level of 0.35 were 98.0, 92.4, 88.9, and 98.6, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The seven-marker model seems to be highly reliable for differentiating between ITB and CD and could be conveniently used by clinicians to obtain results.