Childhood allergies linked with increased adolescent IBS risk
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Allergy-related diseases, including asthma and food hypersensitivity, in childhood were associated with an increased risk of having irritable bowel syndrome at age 16 years, according to research presented at UEG Week Virtual.
In her presentation, Jessica Sjölund, MD, from the Institute of Medicine at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, said that allergy and immune dysregulation may play a role in the development of IBS, but current research has produced conflicting results.
“One of the reasons for this is epidemiological evidence of higher than expected prevalence of allergy-related diseases in individuals with IBS,” she said. “To identify and understand a possible association between allergy-related diseases and IBS is important as it bears potential for influencing both future diagnostics and treatment of IBS.”
Researchers explored this potential association using data from 2,770 individuals from the Swedish BAMSE cohort. In the study, parents and children completed questionnaires about asthma, allergic rhinitis, eczema and food hypersensitivity at ages 1, 2, 4, 8, 12 and 16 years. When the children reached age 16 years, they answered questions based on the Rome III Questionnaire on Pediatric Gastrointestinal Symptoms. Investigators used these answers to group the children into IBS, functional abdominal pain and functional dyspepsia groups.
At age 16 years, the prevalence of IBS was 6.4% (n = 176).
Sjölund and colleagues compared the prevalence of allergy-related diseases among patients with and without IBS. They found that patients with IBS at 16 were more likely to have had asthma at the age of 12 than those without IBS (11.2% vs. 6.7%). More than 40% of patients with IBS reportedly had food hypersensitivity at age 12 years compared with just over 29% of individuals without IBS.
In their analysis, researchers determined that asthma and food hypersensitivity, as well as eczema were associated with an increased risk for concurrent IBS at age 16 years.
“These results suggest that allergy-related diseases and IBS share some common cause or disease mechanism,” Sjölund said. “This could be low-grade inflammation or immune disfunction, which is known to be a factor in allergy-related diseases. This knowledge could be used to develop new treatment options for IBS, for example targeting these processes and consider using the same treatment principles for both allergy-related diseases and IBS.”
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Sjölund J, et al. “Allergy-related diseases during childhood and risk of irritable bowel syndrome at 16 years: A Swedish birth cohort study.” Presented at UEG Week Virtual. Oct. 11-13, 2020.
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