Irritable gastrointestinal syndrome

Abstract

Background: Recurrent upper abdominal discomfort may be the cause of nearly half of the applications to the Internal Medicine Clinics, and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and chronic gastritis (CG) may be the most commonly diagnosed disorders in such cases. Method: Consecutive patients with the IBS and age and sex-matched controls were included. Results: The study included 936 patients with the IBS (592 females) and 346 control cases, totally. Mean age of the patients was 41.0 years, and 63.2% of them were female. Although gastric sample biopsies were taken just in suspected cases, CG was diagnosed nearly in all of the patients with the IBS (80.4% versus 15.0%, p<0.001). Similarly, prevalences of antidepressants use (46.4% versus 16.1%, p<0.001), smoking (35.2% versus 20.8%, p<0.001), hemorrhoids (37.1% versus 7.2%, p<0.001), and urolithiasis (22.0% versus 9.5%, p<0.001) were all higher in the IBS patients, significantly. Beside that the mean values of fasting plasma glucose (FPG) (111.9 versus 105.4 mg/dL, p= 0.002) and plasma triglycerides (167.0 versus 147.3 mg/dL, p= 0.013) were also higher in the IBS patients, significantly. Conclusion: Because FPG and triglycerides are well-known acute phase reactants in the body, IBS and CG may be low-grade inflammatory processes initiated with anxiety, depression, infection, inflammation, trauma, and cancer fear-like stresses of the body, and eventually terminate with smoking, antidepressants use, hemorrhoids, and urolithiasis. Because of the highly significant association of the IBS and CG, they may actually be the two sides of the same paper, and should be called as the irritable gastrointestinal syndrome. Key words: Irritable bowel syndrome, chronic gastritis, depression, smoking, acute phase reactant, fasting plasma glucose, triglycerides