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Is There a Correlation Between Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Lactose Intolerance?

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a poorly understood gastrointestinal disorder that affects a significant percentage of the population and has a strong negative effect on the quality of life. The lack of known pathophysiologic mechanisms has made finding effective treatment strategies difficult. On...

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Autores principales: Cancarevic, Ivan, Rehman, Mahnoor, Iskander, Beshoy, Lalani, Sanee, Malik, Bilal Haider
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Cureus 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7032600/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32104635
http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.6710
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author Cancarevic, Ivan
Rehman, Mahnoor
Iskander, Beshoy
Lalani, Sanee
Malik, Bilal Haider
author_facet Cancarevic, Ivan
Rehman, Mahnoor
Iskander, Beshoy
Lalani, Sanee
Malik, Bilal Haider
author_sort Cancarevic, Ivan
collection PubMed
description Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a poorly understood gastrointestinal disorder that affects a significant percentage of the population and has a strong negative effect on the quality of life. The lack of known pathophysiologic mechanisms has made finding effective treatment strategies difficult. One of the common recommendations by clinicians is a trial of a lactose-free diet. We have wondered if there was sufficient evidence in the currently available literature to support such a recommendation. We have also looked into other possible relationships between malabsorption syndromes and IBS. All the articles used for this review have been found in the PubMed database. We have taken into consideration the possibility that there may be both genetic differences and differences in the gut microbiome between populations living in different geographic regions. Therefore, we have included articles from different geographic regions to increase the generalizability of the findings. While there is a plethora of evidence that IBS patients commonly report milk intolerance, we have not found any conclusive evidence to suggest an objective link between IBS and any known malabsorption syndromes, including lactose malabsorption. Furthermore, trials of lactase supplementation have not led to clinical benefit. We concluded that there was no evidence to support routinely recommending a lactose-free diet for patients diagnosed with IBS, but including hydrogen breath testing in routine workup of IBS is a reasonable clinical decision. Ultimately, we believe that more clinical trials and chemical studies of the feces are needed to determine the pathophysiology and explore possible dietary recommendations for patients with IBS.
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spelling pubmed-70326002020-02-26 Is There a Correlation Between Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Lactose Intolerance? Cancarevic, Ivan Rehman, Mahnoor Iskander, Beshoy Lalani, Sanee Malik, Bilal Haider Cureus Internal Medicine Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a poorly understood gastrointestinal disorder that affects a significant percentage of the population and has a strong negative effect on the quality of life. The lack of known pathophysiologic mechanisms has made finding effective treatment strategies difficult. One of the common recommendations by clinicians is a trial of a lactose-free diet. We have wondered if there was sufficient evidence in the currently available literature to support such a recommendation. We have also looked into other possible relationships between malabsorption syndromes and IBS. All the articles used for this review have been found in the PubMed database. We have taken into consideration the possibility that there may be both genetic differences and differences in the gut microbiome between populations living in different geographic regions. Therefore, we have included articles from different geographic regions to increase the generalizability of the findings. While there is a plethora of evidence that IBS patients commonly report milk intolerance, we have not found any conclusive evidence to suggest an objective link between IBS and any known malabsorption syndromes, including lactose malabsorption. Furthermore, trials of lactase supplementation have not led to clinical benefit. We concluded that there was no evidence to support routinely recommending a lactose-free diet for patients diagnosed with IBS, but including hydrogen breath testing in routine workup of IBS is a reasonable clinical decision. Ultimately, we believe that more clinical trials and chemical studies of the feces are needed to determine the pathophysiology and explore possible dietary recommendations for patients with IBS. Cureus 2020-01-20 /pmc/articles/PMC7032600/ /pubmed/32104635 http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.6710 Text en Copyright © 2020, Cancarevic et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Internal Medicine
Cancarevic, Ivan
Rehman, Mahnoor
Iskander, Beshoy
Lalani, Sanee
Malik, Bilal Haider
Is There a Correlation Between Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Lactose Intolerance?
title Is There a Correlation Between Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Lactose Intolerance?
title_full Is There a Correlation Between Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Lactose Intolerance?
title_fullStr Is There a Correlation Between Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Lactose Intolerance?
title_full_unstemmed Is There a Correlation Between Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Lactose Intolerance?
title_short Is There a Correlation Between Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Lactose Intolerance?
title_sort is there a correlation between irritable bowel syndrome and lactose intolerance?
topic Internal Medicine
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7032600/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32104635
http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.6710
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