Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Causes
By Mayo Clinic staff
Ischemic colitis involves inadequate blood supply reaching your colon. In acute cases, the most frequent cause is blood clots in the arteries leading to your colon. Chronic cases are usually associated with the buildup of fatty deposits (atherosclerosis) in the blood vessels leading to your colon.
In some people, ischemic colitis may be caused by or related to other medical conditions, including:
- Inflammation of the blood vessels (vasculitis)
- Protrusion of an organ or tissue into the surrounding tissue, interfering with the arterial as well as the venous blood supply to the intestine (hernia)
- Elevated sugar, or glucose, levels in the blood (diabetes mellitus)
- Easy blood clotting (hypercoagulable state)
- Radiation treatment to the abdomen
- Colon cancer
The role of medications
Certain medicines also rarely cause ischemic colitis as a side effect. These include:
- Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs
- Estrogen replacement medications
- Migraine medications in the triptan or ergot class
- Blood pressure pills
- Certain antipsychotic drugs
- The heart drug digoxin (Lanoxin)
- Pseudoephedrine
The prescription drug alosetron (Lotronex), used by women with severe irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), carries a Food and Drug Administration warning about its potential link to serious conditions, including ischemic colitis. Before you start Lotronex, your doctor will ask you to read a guide about this drug and sign an agreement that you understand its risks and possible benefits.
Other causes
Abdominal surgery, particularly when it involves repair of a bulging arterial wall (aneurysm) in the region, is occasionally followed by ischemic colitis. In some cases, ischemic colitis may be triggered by infections involving bacteria (such as Escherichia coli), viruses (cytomegalovirus) or parasites (Entamoeba histolytica).
