Reizdarmsyndrom - Epidemiologie und pathophysiologie

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is one of the most frequent reasons why patients seek medical care and therefore, causes a significant socioeconomic burden. Historically, IBS is primarily a symptom-based diagnosis but such a symptom clustering causes significant problems because it is not clear whether and how IBS differs from other diseases. Recent findings indicate that IBS is associated with well-defined structural, molecular, genetic, immunological, neural and psychosocial abnormalities. The numerous pathophysiological mechanisms of IBS reflect the multifactorial character of this disease and strongly suggest the existence of pathophysiologically different disease entities. It is expected that further insight into the pathophysiological mechanisms and the association with clinical symptoms will improve the diagnostics and therapy of IBS in the future. The major challenge will be the development of biomarkers to characterize IBS subgroups to enable therapeutic strategies which target specific pathomechanisms.