In the past year, 30-year-old Zheng had recurrent left lower abdominal pain and diarrhea, with stools 3 to 5 times a day, mostly loose stools, and recently, stools with pus and blood. The community doctor considered dysentery and took antibiotics for treatment, but the condition did not improve after a week, and the number of stools was increasing, reaching 8 to 10 times a day. Zheng went to the gastroenterology department of the hospital and was advised to undergo colonoscopy. 2 days later, it was found that the mucosa of his rectum, sigmoid colon and descending colon was extensively eroded, ulcerated and bleeding, and there were many purulent secretions attached to the surface of the intestinal mucosa, and the endoscopic diagnosis was “ulcerative colitis”. Ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease are both inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Inflammatory bowel disease can occur at any age, but is most common in people aged 20 to 40 years, and can also occur in children or older adults, with little difference in the chance of occurrence between men and women. As a chronic non-infectious intestinal disease, inflammatory bowel disease used to be a common disease in western developed countries, but less common in China. However, with the development of economy and westernization of lifestyle, the number of patients in China is increasing in recent years, which has attracted great attention from the gastroenterology community in China. Inflammatory bowel disease requires lifelong treatment, thus the sooner the disease is properly recognized and treated in a standardized manner, the less impact it will have on the patient’s life and avoid increasing the cost of treatment. Recurrent attacks can be disabling “Although both belong to inflammatory bowel disease, there are differences in the clinical manifestations of ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease.” From the point of view of the onset, ulcerative colitis mainly appears in the rectum and colon, and the inflammation is mainly limited to the mucosa and submucosa of the large intestine, while Crohn’s disease is a chronic inflammatory granulomatous disease of the gastrointestinal tract, and lesions can occur in all segments of the digestive tract from the mouth to the anus, in a segmental distribution. In terms of clinical symptoms, ulcerative colitis presents with abdominal pain, diarrhea, mucopurulent stools, fever, and arthralgia. In contrast, Crohn’s disease has a more complex presentation, mainly with abdominal pain, diarrhea, abdominal mass, fistula formation or intestinal obstruction, etc. Some patients also have fever, poor nutrition and damage outside the GI tract such as joints, skin, eyes and liver. The most important feature of inflammatory bowel disease is recurrent attacks that severely affect quality of life and leave some patients disabled. “The etiology of this group of diseases is not clear, but the interaction of environmental, genetic, infectious and immune factors play a very important role.” Zeng Zhirong pointed out that the current study found that the patient has an abnormal response of the intestinal immune system, the immune system will mistake the food eaten by the patient, bacteria in the intestine and other foreign substances, launched an “indiscriminate attack”, the blood of white blood cells to the digestive tract mucosa to “fight The blood white cells go to the mucosa of the digestive tract to “fight”, which in turn causes inflammation and leads to recurring ulcers. Definitive diagnosis requires colonoscopy The diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease needs to be made based on the patient’s discomfort manifestations, combined with blood and stool tests, especially colonoscopy results. Zeng Zhirong emphasized that since symptoms such as diarrhea and blood in stool are common to many intestinal diseases, the diagnosis should focus on excluding intestinal infections such as bacterial dysentery and amebic dysentery, as well as diseases such as colon cancer, ischemic enteropathy and radiation enteritis. Clinically, it has been found that some patients with inflammatory bowel disease develop complications, such as rectal and colon cancer, intestinal perforation and hemorrhage. Once diagnosed, patients have to fight a “constant battle”. Treatment is mainly to control the inflammation of the intestinal mucosa, maintain remission, reduce recurrence and prevent complications. The treatment plan should be individualized, taking into account the severity of the disease, the extent of lesion involvement and the stage of the disease. Therapeutic agents include aminosalicylic acid preparations, adrenal glucocorticoids, immunosuppressants and surgery.