Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Osteopathic Manipulative Therapy

The Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is defined by a combination of abdominal pain, bowel dysfunction during recurrent periods of shorter or longer duration. The absence of well-defined pathophysiological marker requires a clinical definition. The most used are the Rome criteria III whose version was published in 2006 and version IV under development. An epidemiological study conducted in 2003 in Europe in 8 countries with over 42 000 people, found on the basis of questionnaires a prevalence of 11.5% with a diagnosis of IBS of 4.8%.in the total population; the results of this study were comparable to data obtained in the USA. A French work of our team at 35 447 healthy adults found a 6.2% frequency. In all these studies, there is a very large predominance of women (sex ratio near 2), with a preponderance of subjects of the age group 40-50 years. IBS economic weight is high, partly due to costs directly incurred by the IBS and the costs generated by associated diseases: number of visits to the general practitioner, to the specialist, the prescription and realization of complementary examinations, hospitalization, purchase drugs and work stoppage. From a pathophysiologic perspective, IBS is now considered as a multifactorial disease involving varying degrees, depending on the individual variables, visceral hypersensitivity, disturbances of digestive motility, impaired sensorimotor way communications between the gastrointestinal tract and the central nervous system, intestinal micro-inflammation. Hypothesis of this search is that the osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT) will improve the symptomatology of IBS in patients with functional gastrointestinal disorders.