Source: Sleep  |  Posted 9 years ago

Bacterial gastroenteritis is seen more frequently in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) patients before diagnosis, than among community controls, say British researchers.

IBS was found in 31% of patients with bacterial gastroenteritis and in only 10% of control patients from the same primary-care practice. The odds ratio for IBS in bacterial gastroenteritis patients was 4.1.

Investigators, from the University of Newcastle Faculty of Medicine in North Shields, point out that studies examining the rate of IBS after bacterial gastroenteritis need to exclude patients with prior IBS in a systematic way.

Background study information indicates IBS can follow infectious diarrhoea. In the United States, food-borne infections affect 76 million people a year. In England, 9.4 million people a year are affected. "Of these, only a small percentage see their doctors, and even fewer will have stool culture confirmation," say the researchers.

A total of 217 patients with recent bacterial gastroenteritis and 265 community controls were enrolled in a study to determine if bacterial gastroenteritis patients were more likely to have any of three functional gastrointestinal (GI) disorders: prior IBS, functional dyspepsia or functional diarrhoea. Participants were evaluated between January 2000 and January 2001.

One of the three GI disorders was found in 89 of the patients and in 46 of the controls, for an odds ratio of 3.3.

IBS was found in 67 of the patients (31%) and 26 of the controls (10%).