Reizdarm und Reizmagen – Pathophysiologie und Biomarker

Functional gastrointestinal diseases such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or functional dyspepsia (FD) are the most frequent causes why patients seek medical care. Diagnosis and therapy is a challenge. Both IBS and FD are a primarily symptom-based exclusion diagnosis. Recent findings indicate that IBS and FD are associated with well-defined structural, molecular, genetic, immunological, neural and psychosocial abnormalities. Symptoms are caused or worsen after particular diet, stress, gastroenteritis as well as mechanical and chemical hypersensitivity. The numerous pathophysiological mechanisms of IBS and FD reflect the multifactorial character of these diseases and strongly suggest the existence of distinct disease entities. It is expected that further insights into pathophysiological mechanisms, their clustering and association with clinical symptoms will improve diagnosis and therapy. The major challenge will be the development of biomarkers to better characterize IBS and FD subgroups and to treat the specific pathomechanisms.