Prevalence of irritable bowel syndrome: a community survey in an African population. | Semantic Scholar (2024)

The prevalence of IBS in a population of medical students in South-East Nigeria was 13.7%.

IBS is prevalent in African children and Physicians who attend to children need to have a high index of suspicion for IBS in children who present with abdominal pain when there are no alarm symptoms.

The prevalence of IBS among middle-aged and elderly residents of Palestine is high, and residents in refugee camps and rural areas have a higher incidence ofIBS than those in urban areas.

Prevalence of IBS appeared modestly higher in women, and this remained relatively stable according to geography and criteria used to define its presence, however, among individuals with IBS, subtypes varied according to gender.

The nature of the diagnostic process for IBS and how this impacts epidemiological measurements are discussed and there is no evidence that IBS is associated with an increased mortality risk.

The prevalence of Irritable bowel syndrome among nurses and nursing students in the Brunei Darussalam is comparable to what has been reported, and IBS was significantly associated with psychosomatic symptoms of depression.

IBS is moderately prevalent among the Nigerian medical students, and it is positively associated with the female gender and anxiety, and the disease showed no significant association with other risk factors considered.

Initial findings from this study justifies the need of future longitudinal surveys to validate the existence of psychological stressors and other risk factors in the development of IBS subtypes.

IBS and CC impact negatively on the HRQoL in black African subjects and more importantly in those with IBS than CC, as well as control subjects using the generic SF-36 questionnaire.

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Irritable bowel syndrome is a common disorder in the student population of a medical school in Northern Nigeria and a cross-sectional study of clinical students to document the prevalence of IBS in this environment.

The prevalence of IBS in Shahrekord is lower than that reported from Western developed countries and is closer to that in Asian populations.

Positive diagnosis of IBS can be done by precisely enquiring colonic symptoms in apparently healthy people with a prevalence almost identical to most other countries, and only a minority of them seeks health care.

First detailed evidence in a random sample of an African population showing symptoms consistent with a diagnosis of IBS to be very common is presented, casting doubt on the assumption generated by other workers that IBS is rare among native Africans.

The Black African patient is equally as exposed to irritable bowel syndrome as is his counterpart in the western world and has similar morbidity patterns.

The prevalence of IBS is high among patients attending primary care in the African setting with depression being the likely reason for seeking care, and IBS was significantly associated with increasing age and depression.

IBS is significantly associated with major depression but not gender and bowel subtypes of the patients, and patients with IBS need to be evaluated for depression due to the highly significant relationship between the two conditions.

It is concluded that the onset of IBS may not be limited to early adulthood and that subgroups of Ibs based on bowel patterns may not identify clinically distinct entities.

The irritable bowel syndrome prevalence was similar to the results seen in western countries, and was not to be related with educational status, smoking, daily tea and coffee consumption, alcohol intake, menstrual periods or weight loss.

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