Between 25 million and 45 million Americans who are suffering from IBS, or irritable bowel syndrome, which is a gastrointestinal condition on the large intestine that causes symptoms such as abdominal pain, cramping, gas, bloating, constipation and diarrhea.
What makes the condition worse is that there has been no conclusive test that can diagnose the disease. The lack of diagnosis procedures for the disease is so bad that some doctors are considering IBS as a psychological disorder, as there is no physical proof that can be traced yet to it.
However, Dr. Mark Pimentel from the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center of Los Angeles has developed a pair of blood tests that can diagnose if a person is suffering from IBS.
According to Pimentel, using the tests that he developed to claim that a person has IBS will shorten the time that the patient suffers since investigation times are decreased. The patient suffering from and diagnosed with the disease will be able to begin receiving treatment faster than ever.
The tests that Pimentel developed, which measure the antibodies in the subject's blood, were founded on research that suggested that IBS could be triggered by the patient being infected by a bacterial toxin that is seen in food poisoning cases. The research claims that the toxin makes a person's immune system attack the intestinal tract even after the toxin is no longer present.
Irina Obenauer is one of the patients that could have benefitted from the IBS blood tests. Obenauer was diagnosed with the disease years ago after experiencing bloating and diarrhea, but it took her doctors a significant amount of time since they had to rule out all other possible diseases first.
Obenauer said that she had to undergo a series of tests to rule out certain diseases in the past, which, while allowing doctors to come closer to a correct diagnosis, did not make her feel any better afterwards.
Obenauer underwent the blood tests developed by Pimentel, showing that she indeed has IBS. She was relieved that the tests were positive, as she knew then that the disease was not all just psychological.
"I'm not saying the symptoms went away," Obenauer said, but she added that she started feeling more certain about what she felt after the confirmation.
However, Dr. Jon LaPook, the chief medical correspondent for CBS News and also a practicing gastroenterologist and internist, said that the new blood tests are not perfect. While a positive result in the tests largely suggest that the patient is suffering from IBS, only 44 percent of the people suffering from IBS returned positive results. This means that people with negative results in the blood tests could still have IBS.
Photo: Rosmary | Flickr
