TOPLINE:

Insomnia affected more than one third of patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and was primarily driven by psychological distress and somatic comorbidities rather than gastrointestinal symptom severity alone. Patients with IBS and insomnia experienced more severe somatic and psychological symptoms and had impaired quality of life.

METHODOLOGY:

• Researchers sought to examine the prevalence of insomnia in French patients with IBS and to identify factors associated with the coexistence of the two disorders (September 2022 to February 2025).
• They assessed 700 adult patients with IBS (mean age, 43.9 years; 78.6% women) and used the Insomnia Severity Index score of 15 or higher to identify those with moderate-to-severe insomnia.
• All patients completed multiple validated instruments assessing the severity of IBS, quality of life, anxiety, depression, and somatic symptom burden, and instrument scores were compared between patients with and without insomnia.

TAKEAWAY:

• Overall, 38.6% of patients had moderate-to-severe insomnia. Patients experiencing insomnia demonstrated more severe gastrointestinal and somatic symptoms and a lower quality of life than those not experiencing insomnia (P < .001 for both).
• Older age, higher IBS severity, presence of fibromyalgia and functional dyspepsia, and higher anxiety and depression symptom scores were independent predictors of insomnia severity (adjusted total variance, 0.265; P < .001).

IN PRACTICE:

"Addressing insomnia through psychological and behavioral interventions may improve both mental and gastrointestinal outcomes," the authors of the study wrote.

SOURCE:

This study was led by Eline Albert, CHU Rouen, Rouen, France. It was published online on May 05, 2026, in Neurogastroenterology & Motility.

LIMITATIONS:

The study was limited by the absence of a control group without IBS and recruitment from a single tertiary centre, and the reliance on validated self-report instruments without objective sleep measures (for example, polysomnography) may have permitted divergence between subjective complaints and physiologic sleep disturbance.

DISCLOSURES:

The authors did not report receiving any funding for this study. Some authors reported receiving consulting and/or lecturing fees or serving as consultant/advisory board members for various pharmaceutical companies.

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