Kravdal O, et al. - By utilizing data from the Norwegian Population Register and the Norwegian Patient Register, researchers examined the link between childbearing and risk for inflammatory bowel disease. Estimation of discrete-time hazard models for the diagnosis of Crohn disease (CD) or ulcerative colitis (UC) was done for men and women of age 18-81 in 2011-2016. There were 4,304 CD and 8,866 UC cases. A lower CD risk the following year was seen in women whose youngest child was 0-4 years old vs the childless. No such decrease in CD risk was evident among fathers. A higher CD risk and UC risk was observed in men whose youngest child was older than 20 in comparison with the childless. In men whose youngest child was aged 0-4, an increased UC risk was noted. The biological influences of the pregnancy may be reflected by the short-term decline of women’s CD risk following a birth. Alternatively, it possibly indicates residual confounding or lifestyle influences of parenthood that are of particular importance for CD in women. Particularly, a possible contribution of variations in the use of oral contraception (not possible to control for) to the observed pattern was suggested.