UC may increase your likelihood of forming a blood clot. Talk with your doctor about the potential risks and benefits of anticoagulant medications.

Some people with ulcerative colitis experience hypercoagulability, which means their risk for blood clots is increased.

Learn more about the connection between these two conditions and whether anticoagulant medications are a beneficial treatment for this possible effect.

People with ulcerative colitis are three times more likely to experience a thromboembolism (blood clot) compared with those who don’t have ulcerative colitis.

It’s important to remember that blood clotting is your body’s natural response to bleeding. You need your blood to clot so you won’t bleed excessively. It’s important to keep a balance of blood clotting factors so they won’t cause you to form a blood clot when you don’t need to.

One of the more serious complications of ulcerative colitis is rectal bleeding.

Doctors first connected an increased risk of blood clots with ulcerative colitis when they observed young people experiencing blood clots at a younger-than-expected age. If you have ulcerative colitis, it’s important to be aware of your increased clotting risk, but also to know the incidence of a clot is about 1% to 8% of all people with ulcerative colitis.

Blood clots can cause a venous thromboembolism, which is a clot that usually forms in a deep vein of your leg. Doctors call this deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Symptoms of a DVT include:

  • discoloration of your leg or red-appearing streaks
  • leg pain/tenderness
  • leg swelling
  • part of your leg feels warm to the touch

However, clots can also travel from your legs to your lungs, which doctors call a pulmonary embolism (PE), or blood clot in the lungs. Symptoms of a PE include:

  • chest pain that worsens with breathing
  • feeling dizzy
  • losing consciousness
  • rapid heart rate
  • sudden shortness of breath
  • very fast breathing

If you experience these or other clot-related symptoms, get emergency medical attention.

Clotting requires a multi-step process. Anticoagulant medications target different steps in this process to prevent clots from forming when they aren’t supposed to. However, anticoagulant medications may increase your risk of more severe rectal bleeding when you have an ulcerative colitis flare-up.

For this reason, doctors won’t usually prescribe anticoagulant medications to you unless you’re in an active flare-up (and usually in the hospital), after a surgery, or have already had a blood clot in the past. Each of these instances increases your risk of blood clotting. The most common recommendation if you are in the hospital with active IBD is to go for walks.

A number of anticoagulant medications are available, and which one your doctor prescribes may depend upon how long you’re going to take it, your overall health, and even what medications your insurance will cover to help keep your costs low. There’s no one medication that’s the “gold standard” of anticoagulation treatment for a patient.

Examples of anticoagulation medications include:

If a doctor does prescribe anticoagulants to you, you can ask how the medication works and why it may be the best option for you.

Living with ulcerative colitis

Getting an ulcerative colitis diagnosis can be understandably life changing. It’s important to get help and support so you can manage your condition and live well. Some resources include:

Healthline also has a listing of numerous resources, social media pages, and blogs that can help.

Ulcerative colitis can manifest in a number of ways, one of them being blood clots. It’s important to know the symptoms of blood clots, such as swelling or discoloration in your leg.

Ask your doctor if they have concerns about your risks for blood clots, and how you can minimize these risks whenever possible. Managing your ulcerative colitis symptoms may also help.