TOPLINE:

Patients who experienced infectious enteritis had a significantly increased risk of developing irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and functional dyspepsia, alongside elevated healthcare use, and the excess risk persisted up to 10 years.

METHODOLOGY:

• Infectious enteritis is linked to an increased risk for new-onset IBS. However, prior studies are small, have short follow-up data, and have rarely assessed long-term healthcare use.
• Researchers conducted a retrospective cohort analysis using electronic health records from a large US network between January 2000 and December 2014 to assess the long-term risk for IBS and functional dyspepsia after infectious enteritis.
• They included adults with bacterial, viral, or parasitic enteritis and propensity score matched them to control individuals with at least two outpatient visits but no recorded enteritis.
• The primary outcome was the occurrence of incident IBS and functional dyspepsia at 1, 5, and 10 years after infectious enteritis.
• Secondary outcomes included IBS- and functional dyspepsia-related medication use, endoscopy, abdominal imaging, and hospital admissions; pathogen-specific analyses were also performed.

TAKEAWAY:

• The final analysis included 202,244 patients who experienced infectious enteritis (mean age, 40.6 years; 59.9% female), matched with an equal number of control individuals.
• At 1 year, patients in the enteritis group vs those in the control group had a higher risk of developing IBS (risk ratio [RR], 2.35) and functional dyspepsia (RR, 2.02; P < .01 for both). The excess risk persisted at 5 and 10 years (P < .01 for all).
• At 1 year, patients in the enteritis group had higher risks for IBS- and functional dyspepsia-related medication use, endoscopy, abdominal imaging, and hospital admissions (P < .01 for all).
• Salmonella/Shigella and Giardia lamblia infections were linked to the highest risks of developing IBS (P < .01 for both).

IN PRACTICE:

“[The study] findings highlight the importance of early recognition and risk stratification to guide the prevention and management of postinfection IBS,” the authors of the study wrote.

SOURCE:

The study was led by Mohamed H. Eldesouki, MD, New York Medical College at Saint Michael’s Medical Center, Newark, New Jersey. It was published online in Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics.

LIMITATIONS:

The study relied on diagnostic codes, which may have caused misclassification and documentation errors. IBS was not identified by Rome IV criteria; thus, true IBS may have been overestimated. The database lacked detailed clinical data and did not count repeat infections.

DISCLOSURES:

The study received support from institutional resources. The authors declared having no conflicts of interest.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.