Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2013 Jul;19(3):301-11.
doi: 10.5056/jnm.2013.19.3.301. Epub 2013 Jul 8.

Irritable bowel syndrome and migraine: bystanders or partners?

Full-Young Chang  1 , Ching-Liang Lu
Affiliations

Irritable bowel syndrome and migraine: bystanders or partners?

Full-Young Chang et al. J Neurogastroenterol Motil. 2013 Jul.

Abstract

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and migraine are distinct clinical disorders. Apart from the characteristics of chronic and recurrent pain in nature, these pain-related disorders apparently share many similarities. For example, IBS is female predominant with community prevalence about 5-10%, whereas that of migraine is 1-3% also showing female predominance. They are often associated with many somatic and psychiatric comorbidities in terms of fibromyaglia, chronic fatigue syndrome, interstitial cystitis, insomnia and depression etc., even the IBS subjects may have coexisted migraine with an estimated odds ratio of 2.66. They similarly reduce the quality of life of victims leading to the social, medical and economic burdens. Their pathogeneses have been somewhat addressed in relation to biopsychosocial dysfunction, heredity, genetic polymorphism, central/visceral hypersensitivity, somatic/cutaneous allodynia, neurolimbic pain network, gonadal hormones and abuses etc. Both disorders are diagnosed according to the symptomatically based criteria. Multidisciplinary managements such as receptor target new drugs, melantonin, antispasmodics, and psychological drugs and measures, complementary and alternatives etc. are recommended to treat them although the used agents may not be necessarily the same. Finally, the prognosis of IBS is pretty good, whereas that of migraine is less fair since suicide attempt and stroke are at risk. In conclusion, both distinct chronic pain disorders to share many similarities among various aspects probably suggest that they may locate within the same spectrum of a pain-centered disorder such as central sensitization syndromes. The true pathogenesis to involve these disorders remains to be clarified in the future.

Keywords: Biopsychosocial model; Comorbidity; Irritable bowel syndrome; Migraine; Quality of life.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of interest: None.

Figures

Figure
Figure
Meta-analysis of 6 studies to estimate the odds ratio of irritable bowel syndrome individuals to have coexisting migraine/headache.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Manchikanti L, Singh V, Datta S, Cohen SP, Hirsch JA American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians. Comprehensive review of epidemiology, scope, and impact of spinal pain. Pain Physician. 2009;12:E35–E70. - PubMed
    1. Azevedo LF, Costa-Pereira A, Mendonça L, Dias CC, Castro-Lopes JM. Epidemiology of chronic pain: a population-based nationwide study on its prevalence, characteristics and associated disability in Portugal. J Pain. 2012;13:773–783. - PubMed
    1. Longstreth GF, Thompson WG, Chey WD, Houghton LA, Mearin F, Spiller RC. Functional bowel disorders. Gastroenterology. 2006;130:1480–1491. - PubMed
    1. Chang FY, Lu CL, Chen TS. The Current prevalence of irritable bowel syndrome in Asia. J Neurogastroenterol Motil. 2010;16:389–400. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Whitehead WE, Palsson OS, Levy RR, Feld AD, Turner M, Von Korff M. Comorbidity in irritable bowel syndrome. Am J Gastroenterol. 2007;102:2767–2776. - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources