title: What does pain or discomfort in irritable bowel syndrome mean?
abstract: Despite many studies on pain of functional gastrointestinal disorders (FGID), the pain mechanism of FGID is not well understood, and pain treatment of FGID is not established. Following our former functional dyspepsia (FD) study, we proposed two subgroups of patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), pain and discomfort (not pain). The duration of disease of discomfort IBS patients was longer than that of pain IBS patients (P < 0.05) The rate of anxiety disorder of pain IBS patients tended to be higher than that of discomfort IBS patients (P = 0.07172). Fifteen (15.2%) of 99 pain IBS patients and 1 (3.4%) of 29 discomfort IBS patients overlapped FD (P < 0.1). We expected that a common psychosocial mechanism would influence both pain dyspepsia patients and pain IBS patients, however, there were some differences between these FGID patients with pain. Anxiety in IBS patients with lower gastrointestinal pain seems to be important in their treatment.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Kyushu University, 3-1-1, Maidashi, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka 812-8582, Japan. handa@cephal.med.kyushu-u.ac.jp
authors.forename: Masanori
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Handa
authors.forename: Hideyuki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Nukina
authors.forename: Katsumi
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ando
authors.forename: Chiharu
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kubo
mesh_terms: D015746:Abdominal Pain / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology*; D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D017677:Age Distribution; D016009:Chi-Square Distribution; D015331:Cohort Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D043183:Irritable Bowel Syndrome / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010147:Pain Measurement; D011336:Probability; D011379:Prognosis; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D017678:Sex Distribution; D018434:Sickness Impact Profile; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D013315:Stress, Psychological