Letters to the Editor
Treatment of Patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome
TO THE EDITOR: I read the article on the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) by Drs. Hadley and Gaarder with great interest.1 Although the information was extensive and well referenced, it missed an important facet of the current understanding and treatment of IBS. The incidence of postinfectious inflammatory bowel disease (7 to 34 percent) has been well studied since the mid-1990s. These patients and patients with long-standing IBS show evidence of a motility disturbance of the nocturnal housekeeper stripping wave of the small intestine with subsequent overgrowth of the innate small intestinal bacteria.2 Therefore, a new approach to the treatment of IBS is being applied by gastroenterologists.
Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) is indicated by a positive lactulose breath test in 10 to 85 percent of patients with IBS. Disruption of the normal small bowel bacterial population appears to result in symptoms of gas, bloating, flatulence, and altered bowel function, often in response to food intake. Several randomized, double-blind, and open-label studies have demonstrated the potential benefit of antibiotics, including the nonabsorbed antibiotic rifaximin (Xifaxan) for the treatment of SIBO in patients with IBS and functional bowel syndrome.3-6 Furthermore, antibiotics are the only pharmacotherapy identified to date to confer sustained clinical benefit beyond cessation of therapy in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial of patients with IBS.4 The potential benefits of nonabsorbed antibiotics in the management of IBS should be considered.
Author disclosure: Dr. Weinstock is on the speaker's bureau for Salix Pharmaceuticals.
REFERENCES
1. Hadley SK, Gaarder SM. Treatment of irritable bowel syndrome. Am Fam Physician 2005;72:2501-6.
2. Pimentel M, Soffer EE, Chow EJ, Kong Y, Lin HC. Lower frequency of MMC is found in IBS subjects with abnormal lactulose breath test, suggesting bacterial overgrowth. Dig Dis Sci 2002;47:2639-43.
3. Pimentel M, Chow EJ, Lin HC. Normalization of lactulose breath testing correlates with symptom improvement in irritable bowel syndrome: a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study. Am J Gastroenterol 2003;98:412-9.
4. Pimentel M, Park S, Kong Y, Wade R, Kane SV. Rifaximin, a nonabsorbable antibiotic improves the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome: a double-blind, randomized, controlled study [abstract]. Abstracts of the 70th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology, October 30-November 2, 2005, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. Am J Gastroenterol 2005; 100(9 suppl):S234.
5. Lauritano EC, Gabrielli M, Lupascu A, Santoliquido A, Nucera G, Scarpellini E, et al. Rifaximin dose-finding study for the treatment of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Aliment Pharmacol Ther 2005;22:31-5.
6. Sharara AI, Aoun E, Abdul-Baki H, Mounzer R, Sidani S, Elhajj I. A randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial of rifaximin in patients with abdominal bloating and flatulence. Am J Gastroenterol 2006;101:326-33.
editor's note: This letter was sent to the authors of "Treatment of Irritable Bowel Syndrome," who declined to reply.
The POEM "Positive Feedback Is Effective for Decreasing Stuttering" (February 1, 2006, page 524) contained an error in the last full paragraph of the right-hand column on page 524. The last sentence of this paragraph incorrectly listed the number needed to treat as 7.8; 95% confidence interval (CI), 6.9 to 20.0. The sentence should read have as follows: "Significantly more children in the treated group decreased to a stuttering rate of less than 1 percent of syllables compared with children in the control group (number needed to treat = 2.3; 95% CI, 1.4 to 14.5)." The online version of this article has been corrected.
Send letters to Kenny Lin, M.D., Assistant Editor, American Family Physician, e-mail: afplet@aafp.org. Letters submitted via regular mail should be sent to: 11400 Tomahawk Creek Pkwy., Leawood, KS 66211-6272.
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