Irritable Bowel Syndrome Symptoms During Remission of Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) — either Crohn disease (CD) or ulcerative colitis (UC) — who are in clinical remission can continue to experience symptoms, which have generally been attributed to co-occurrence of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). However, persistent symptoms could instead result from low-grade subclinical inflammation from IBD rather than from the presence of IBS. Currently available diagnostic methods have been unable to provide clinicians with a definitive answer.

To investigate a potential means of identifying the cause of symptoms, researchers in Ireland conducted a prospective study to test whether fecal calprotectin level — a surrogate marker of subclinical inflammation — was associated with IBS-like sympt…