The Sense of Coherence index and the irritable bowel syndrome - A cross-sectional comparison among irritable bowel syndrome patients with and withoutcoexisting fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome non-patients, and controls

Background: Sense of Coherence (SOC) is a global orientation that affects c oping with stressors. A strong SOC is associated with better health outcome s. The purpose of this study was to evaluate SOC among patients with irrita ble bowel syndrome (IBS) and matched controls. Methods: Seventy-nine IBS pa tients and 72 matched controls completed questionnaires and were tested for fibromyalgia (FS). The controls were subdivided into healthy controls (n = 49) or IBS non-patients (n = 23), and the patients into IBS only (n = 54) or IBS and FS (n = 25). Results: The mean SOC score was higher for the cont rols than for the IBS patients (65.7 +/- 1.2 and 59.6 +/- 1.1, respectively ; P = 0.003). There was no significant difference between the healthy contr ols and the IBS non-patients. The controls had a higher SOC than patients w ith IBS only and patients with IBS and FS (P = 0.0004). Conclusions: An ass ociation was found between IBS and SOC. No causality can be inferred from t his study. Individuals with low SOC may be more likely to express symptoms in terms of psychologic distress and increased health care utilization beca use of poor coping skills. Conversely, the presence of IBS may affect SOC n egatively. Further longitudinal studies could clarify the potential of SOC as a predictor variable (for example, for treatment results) or an outcome variable.