(Press-News.org) A patient's viewpoint of the severity of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) symptoms can be influenced not only by physical symptoms of IBS but broader psychological problems, according to a new study in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association.
"Clinicians who face pressure to treat patients in a cost-effective manner within tight time constraints and at a satisfactory level are likely to find that patient-reported outcome data can increase their understanding of what patients mean when they describe how they function or feel," said Jeffrey Lackner, PsyD, of the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, and lead author of this study. "To maximize the utility of patient-reported outcomes, it is important to know what they measure and what influences patients' perceptions of their symptoms when gastroenterologists ask them about their symptoms. Our study suggests that irritable bowel syndrome patient-reported outcomes are not simply about gastrointestinal symptoms."
Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) are used to describe symptoms, inform treatment planning and gauge the benefit of treatments for gastrointestinal disorders, including IBS. In this study, funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, researchers explored two different PRO rating scales that measure IBS severity, and identified psychological factors that might bias PRO ratings by affecting how patients interpret symptom severity. They found that a substantial proportion of the variation in the PROs (50 to 55 percent) could be explained by three distinct gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms: pain, bloating and defecation.
While the study showed that GI symptoms explain some of the variance in overall IBS severity scores, there was a large proportion of variance that was not attributable to symptoms that may be explained by psychological factors. For example, pain catastrophisizing (the belief that pain is awful), somatization (converting distress into physical symptoms) and anxiety sensitivity (fear of arousal symptoms) had a direct association with GI symptoms, but not with overall IBS severity. This suggests that psychological factors affect severity through their impact on GI symptoms.
"The patient-reported outcome movement is likely, in the near future, to extend to clinical settings where a premium is placed on understanding symptoms from the patient's perspective. This is particularly true for IBS and other benign diseases that lack a biomarker marking illness severity. Our results show that the science of asking and answering questions is an inescapable, but potentially positive, step in the direction of understanding patients' symptoms," added Dr. Lackner.
IBS is a chronic, painful, oftentimes disabling GI condition that leads to crampy pain, gassiness, bloating and changes in bowel habits. Some people with IBS have constipation, others have diarrhea, and some people experience both. There is no satisfactory medical treatment for its full range of symptoms. To meet the unmet need for safe, effective and widely available treatments for IBS, the FDA issued a PRO guidance document. A PRO instrument is used to capture clinically important information regarding the therapeutic benefit of treatment from the patient's perspective.
INFORMATION:
For more information on IBS, please read the AGA brochure "Understanding Irritable Bowel Syndrome."
About the AGA Institute
The American Gastroenterological Association is the trusted voice of the GI community. Founded in 1897, the AGA has grown to include 17,000 members from around the globe who are involved in all aspects of the science, practice and advancement of gastroenterology. The AGA Institute administers the practice, research and educational programs of the organization. www.gastro.org.
About Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology
The mission of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology is to provide readers with a broad spectrum of themes in clinical gastroenterology and hepatology. This monthly peer-reviewed journal includes original articles as well as scholarly reviews, with the goal that all articles published will be immediately relevant to the practice of gastroenterology and hepatology. For more information, visit www.cghjournal.org.
Become an AGA fan on Facebook.
Join our LinkedIn group.
Follow us on Twitter @AmerGastroAssn.
Check out our videos on YouTube.
END
Animals like foxes and raccoons are highly adaptable. They move around and eat everything from insects to eggs. They and other "generalist feeders" like them may also be crucial to sustaining biological diversity, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
McGill biology researchers have developed a unified, spatially based understanding of biodiversity that takes into account the complex food webs of predators and prey. "Biodiversity exists within a landscape. Predators and prey are continuously on the move as their ...
Carbon nanotubes, tiny cylinders composed of one-atom-thick carbon lattices, have gained fame as one of the strongest materials known to science. Now a group of researchers from the University of Michigan is taking advantage of another one of carbon nanotubes' unique properties, the low refractive index of low-density aligned nanotubes, to demonstrate a new application: making 3-D objects appear as nothing more than a flat, black sheet.
The refractive index of a material is a measure of how much that material slows down light, and carbon nanotube "forests" have a low ...
MacTransco is one of South Africa's leading haulers of processed and unprocessed goods. Markus van der Merwe, Director of MacTransco, believes one of the company's key advantages lies in the location of its operations in Lephalale and Messina. He describes Messina, which is also where the company's head office is situated, as "the gateway to Africa" because of its continued development. "There is a lot of commodity coming through Messina into Africa in addition to large investments being made in the mines," explains van der Merwe.
Van der Merwe stresses ...
Hydrodynamics of writing with ink
Jungchul Kim, Myoung-Woon Moon, Kwang-Ryeol Lee, L. Mahadevan, and Ho-Young Kim
Physical Review Letters (forthcoming)
For millennia, writing has been the preferred way to convey information and knowledge from one generation to another. We first developed the ability to write on clay tablets with a point, and then settled on a reed pen, as preserved from 3000 BC in Egypt when it was used with papyrus. This device consisted of a hollow straw that served as an ink reservoir and allowed ink to flow to its tip by capillary action. A quill ...
Bokamoso Private Hospital, located just west of Gaborone in Botswana, has been operational since January 2010. The vision in setting up a brand new hospital was to provide specialist services and facilities not previously catered for in existing hospitals in Botswana.
"One of our unique selling points is the range of specialist services that we provide," says Gontle Moleele, the Chief Medical Officer at Bokamoso Private Hospital. Services available at the hospital include neurology, cardiology, endocrinology, haemodialysis, sports medicine, pathology and gynecology, ...
The Powerhouse Clothing Company is one of South Africa's most flexible and innovative clothing manufacturers. The company is 100 percent dedicated to manufacturing solely in South Africa, despite a growing competition from companies in the East and cheap imports from outside SA being at all time high in the clothing industry.
As a result of Powerhouse's aim to be a wholly South African company, its supply chain is one of its most important operating focuses. "If your supply chain is not working in tandem together then everything falls apart," notes Justin Mansfield, ...
Costs for second-generation ethanol processing, which will ease the stress on corn and sugarcane, are unlikely to be competitive until 2020, according to a unique Queen's University study.
"This study really lays out in black and white where we are and where we are going," says Warren Mabee, an assistant professor in the School of Policy Studies and Department of Geography. "It should prompt companies to reassess (their processes going forward)."
The researchers found that building large scale facilities for second-generation ethanol production will be more costly than ...
Only a few decades ago, scientists discovered the existence of "sprites" 30 to 55 miles above the surface of the Earth. They're offshoots of electric discharges caused by lightning storms, and a valuable window into the composition of our atmosphere. Now researchers at Tel Aviv University say that sprites are not a phenomenon specific to our planet.
Jupiter and Saturn experience lightning storms with flashes 1,000 or more times more powerful than those on Earth, says Ph.D. student Daria Dubrovin. With her supervisors Prof. Colin Price of TAU's Department of Geophysics ...
Although JP Pretorius, Dealer Principal and Director of Autohaus Windhoek, admits customer service is very important, a quality product portfolio like Audi, VW and MAN gives the company a unique and strong selling point. "We try to innovate and put our customers first, but we also have some fantastic products to back-up our service.
Accolades and recognitions from its vehicle manufacturers have also reinforced Autohaus Windhoek's standing as a premiere distributor. "In the last three years we have received 14 VW and Audi South Africa awards, which includes ...
MADISON – Hydrogen peroxide isn't just that bottled colorless liquid in the back of the medicine cabinet that's used occasionally for cleaning scraped knees and cut fingers.
It's also a natural chemical in the body that rallies at wound sites, jump-starting immune cells into a series of events.
A burst of hydrogen peroxide causes neutrophils, the immune system's first responders, to rush to the wound to fight microorganisms, remove damaged tissue and then start the inflammation process.
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers now have discovered the molecular ...
