THE SHORT-TERM NATURAL-HISTORY OF IRRITABLE-BOWEL-SYNDROME - A TIME-SERIES ANALYSIS

Although researchers have studied irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), incl uding its physiological and psychological characteristics and treatmen ts' effectiveness, basic descriptive information-about IBS has been li mited to lists of symptoms and explanations of what IBS is not. The pu rpose of the present study is to describe how core IBS symptoms vary o ver time. Twenty-five subjects (17 females, 8 males), who were not rec eiving treatment for IBS, rated the severity of their IBS symptoms dai ly for 8 weeks. Four symptoms' (abdominal-pain, abdominal tenderness, constipation and diarrhea) ratings were slimmed to create a primary IB S symptom score. The data were detrended, then a time-series analysis was performed. Many subjects' IBS severity was predictable over more t han one day, and symptoms tended to occur in clusters rather than rand omly. Anxiety and depression were slightly to moderately correlated wi th IBS variables, but virtually all of these correlations were nonsign ificant. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.