Irritable bowel syndrome: Challenges ahead [Review]

摘要

Irritable bowel syndrome is one of the most commonly encountered chronic gastrointestinal disorders, accounting for more than half of the patients reporting to gastroenterologists with gastrointestinal symptoms, and incidence of it is rising every day. Although it is not a life-threatening illness, it causes distress to those afflicted and a feeling of helplessness and frustration to the physicians attempting to treat it. It is a motility disorder of the gastrointestinal tract, essentially functional in nature with definite psychosomatic basis. The patients present a variety of symptoms of discomfort without organic abnormalities. Its etiology and functional pathology are unknown. Also there is no specific diagnostic procedure to identify it because the underlying pathophysiology remains unknown. Thus, the diagnosis remains dependent on the symptoms cluster and exclusion of the related pathological diseases. Further, there is no single approach to treat it, hence it is treated with a variety of drugs and other therapies without notable enduring success.