DDW Conference Preview: IBD at Digestive Disease Week® 2024

Digestive Disease Week^® (DDW) will be held May 18-21, 2024, in Washington, DC. This annual event serves as the leading gathering for gastroenterologists, researchers, and industry professionals dedicated to improving outcomes for patients affected by gastrointestinal diseases.

Before proceeding, we strongly encourage you to register for the event by clicking here. This will allow you to secure accommodations, access travel information, plan your schedule, and reserve your spot for networking events before they reach capacity.

Listed below are some of the essential sessions at DDW focusing on inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which includes Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. The sessions are arranged in chronological order for your convenience.

Clinical Insights into the Role of Diet in IBD
Date: 5/18/24 @ 8:00 am
Location: 146C – Walter E. Washington Convention Center
Description: While it is intuitive that inflammation of the bowel can be affected positively and negatively by diet, it is only recently that the underpinnings of diet on inflammatory bowel disease have been explored. This session reports the latest research on how fat, fiber, dairy and specific diets affect IBD.

IBD Diagnosis. Monitoring, and Prediction of Complications
Date: 5/18/24 @ 8:00 am
Location: 146AB – Walter E. Washington Convention Center
Description: This session highlights the latest research on novel prediction models in IBD as well as the role of the fecal microbiome and imaging in IBD.

Digging Deeper: Pathophysiologic Insights into the Role of the Environment in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases
Date: 5/18/24 @ 2:00 pm
Location: 146AB – Walter E. Washington Convention Center
Description: Environmental factors influence the pathogenesis of IBD. Experimental evidence has been critical in providing mechanistic insights into how environmental factors affect gut inflammation.

Key Challenges in IBD: Strategies and Solutions from the Experts
Date: 5/19/24 @ 8:00 am
Location: Ballroom B – Walter E. Washington Convention Center
Description: Management of IBD is complex and challenging. This session will have IBD experts discuss evidence-based approaches to four common and challenging scenarios in IBD: choosing among available biologic and small molecule therapies based on patient profiles, proper use of therapeutic drug monitoring, management of fistulizing Crohn’s, and diagnosis and management of refractory pouch disorders.

Pregnancy and IBD: Preliminary Results from the Helmsley Global Consensus Grade Conference
Date: 5/19/24 @ 10:00 am
Location: Ballroom B – Walter E. Washington Convention Center
Description: There is fear surrounding the impact of IBD and its therapies on pregnancy and infant outcomes, as well as fear surrounding the impact of pregnancy on IBD and maternal health. This session will address the most common and difficult clinical questions that clinicians face with regard to IBD and pregnancy.

Recent Advances in Gut-brain Communication
Date: 5/19/24 @ 2:00 pm
Location: 103AB – Walter E. Washington Convention Center
Description: The objective of this session is to learn about new discoveries in the basic science domain of how the gut and the brain communicate with each other. Attendees will also appreciate new understanding of the relationship between neurodegenerative disease and IBD.

Irritable Bowel Syndrome in Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Boundaries Along a Continuum
Date: 5/20/24 @ 8:00 am
Location: 206 – Walter E. Washington Convention Center
Description: IBS-like symptoms in patients with IBD are common yet presenting a diagnostic and clinical challenge for patients and their providers. This session will review the prevalence of co-existing IBS and IBD, provide practical guidance for identifying and treating IBS-like symptoms in IBD, discuss pathophysiological mechanisms of persistent symptoms in quiescent IBD, and highlight critical knowledge gaps that present future opportunities for research in IBS-IBD overlap.

New Knowledge and Pragmatic Guidance from Existing IBD Research: A Cochrane Symposia Demonstrating the Pitfalls and Promise of Network Meta-analyses to Inform Clinical Practice
Date: 5/20/24 @ 10:00 am
Location: 146C – Walter E. Washington Convention Center
Description: Clinical guidelines increasingly rely on technical reviews of evidence and these in turn are becoming increasingly complex in methods. This offers great promise to truly achieve evidence based clinical guidelines. Network Meta-analysis allows studies to be compared not just directly through pairwise analysis, but indirectly across the network enhancing the precision and consistency of the evidence and the resulting ‘ranking’ can appear to offer great promise to guiding clinical decision making. In this session, we will consider three clinical scenarios of inducing and maintaining remission in Crohn’s disease, Ulcerative Colitis and Fistulizing disease. We will then exemplify the promise of this form of analysis when completed correctly and include GRADE analysis of the network with the presentation of novel graphical summaries. We will also detail the pitfalls of poor methodology and interpretation. We will use the example of the update to the UK BSG guidelines to demonstrate the impact such findings can have on clinical practice guidelines.

IBD Adverse Events Related to Therapy: Focus on Small Molecules
Date: 5/20/24 @ 10:00 am
Location: Ballroom B – Walter E. Washington Convention Center
Description: Small molecules are a new exciting therapeutic class in IBD that may have potential safety signals which have not been well described in the real world. This session examines the role of small molecules with regard to pregnancy outcomes, cardiovascular events, thromboembolic risk, and cancer. The effect of other therapies on IBD, including GLP1 agonists and PPI’s are also examined.

Therapies Targeting the Microbiome to Treat GI Disorders
Date: 5/20/24 @ 10:00 am
Location: 140AB – Walter E. Washington Convention Center
Description: This session will provide insight into the novel microbiome driven strategies to treat GI disorders. The talks in the session encompass the role of short-chain fatty acids and probiotics in disorders of GI motility and aging, the protective effects of Saccharomyces boulardii in colitis-associated colorectal cancer, and utility of fecal microbiota transplantation in inflammatory GI disorders.

Role of the Environment in IBD
Date: 5/21/24 @ 10:00 am
Location: Ballroom B – Walter E. Washington Convention Center
Description: As our scientific tools improve, so does our ability to link the environment with different aspects of IBD. In this session, we highlight the latest insights on how air pollution, an inflammatory prenatal environment, diet, and exhaled breath analysis may help uncover the fundamental underpinnings of IBD.

Uncontrolled Therapeutic Observations in IBD
Date: 5/21/24 @ 2:00 pm
Location: Ballroom B – Walter E. Washington Convention Center
Description: In this session, several clinically relevant presentations will put the attendee at the cutting edge of research and clinical care, with regard to stem cells for perianal fistulas, biologic de-escalation, subcutaneous biologics, and use of small molecules in microscopic colitis.

Irritable bowel disease is a key topic that will be addressed at DDW. The conference will also showcase the latest advancements in GI cancer screenings, the impact of artificial intelligence in gastroenterology, updates on GERD, and much, much more. It is guaranteed to be an informative time and we look forward to seeing you there!