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Irritable bowel syndrome: classification and pathogenesis.

T P Almy·R I Rothstein
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Abstract

The irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a chronic disorder of gut motility with a variable but continuous spectrum of clinical features, affects 15% of the population of developed countries. Its intestinal and extraintestinal symptoms arise principally from the global physiological changes that accompany emotional tension; but the advancing knowledge of neurohumoral control of gut motility has not yet revealed any features pathognomonic for IBS. Persons having IBS exhibit psychoneurotic traits in varying degree; and IBS patients (a minority of the whole) differ from nonpatients in having more severe life changes and in their learned illness behavior.

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BibTeXRIS

T P Almy, R I Rothstein. 1987. Irritable bowel syndrome: classification and pathogenesis.. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.me.38.020187.001353

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