Autonomic nervous system dysregulationin irritable bowel syndrome

Abstract

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a functional bowel disorder manifested by chronic, recurring abdominal pain or discomfort associated with disturbed bowel habit in the absence of structural abnormalities likely to account for these symptoms. IBS is associated with other intestinal and non intestinal symptoms such as heartburn,dyspepsia, genitourinarysymptoms, headache, backache, and lethargy. Diagnosing IBS is complex and often involves multiple tests to rule out several other diseases that may be associated withIBS-like symptoms. The Rome III criteria have been developed in order to help facilitate accurate diagnosis of IBS. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the autonomicregulation in IBS subjects and healthy controls bymeans of a non-invasive approach (Holter ECG). For better assessment, this study was designed to be a cross sectional study. The current study included 40 patients, 20 of them were diagnosed as IBS and the other 20 were healthy controls according to the pre-designed inclusion criteria. In the present study, there was no significant difference between studied groups as regards to the mean age. Our current study shows that no significant difference between IBS patients and control could be elicited as regards to sex(P > 0.05), but it revealed that IBS is more common in females. In our study the Holter data of IBS patients and controls shows no significant difference as regards to SDNN (P=0.371), SDANN (P=0.286) andRMSSD (P=0.837).