Kids' tummy bugs tied to irritable bowels (IBS)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – A serious bout with a stomach bug can raise a child's risk of having irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) later on, new research shows.

People with IBS often have stomach pain, bloating, gas and altered bowel habits such as diarrhea and constipation. While the root cause of the condition isn't known, adults who have had stomach infections are known to be at greater risk. The relationship between these infections and IBS in children is not as clear.

To investigate, Dr. John K. Marshall of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario and his colleagues looked at children participating in the Walkerton Health Study, the largest-ever study of IBS after gastrointestinal infection.

In 2000, an outbreak of bacterial gastroenteritis sickened at least 2,300 people in this Ontario town, and killed seven; the researchers have been following Walkerton residents since 2002.

In the current study, they looked at 467 boys and girls who were younger than 16 at the time of the outbreak, but turned 16 during the eight-year follow-up period. None of them had been diagnosed with IBS before the outbreak occurred.

Among the 305 who had been sickened during the outbreak, around 10 percent reported IBS symptoms eight years later, compared to only about 2 percent of the 162 who hadn't gotten sick. This meant the outbreak victims were nearly five times as likely to have IBS as the healthy controls; when the researchers looked only at the 130 study participants whose illness had been diagnosed by a doctor (rather than just having been self-reported), the risk of IBS symptoms was more than seven times greater compared to those who had escaped the illness.

Look, Celiac Disese and Wheat Gluten Intolerance are frequently intermittent.

Virtually all Celiac Disease victims are also lactose intolerant ~ for two reasons ~ (1) They are members of various Sa'ami and North Asian groups who are naturally lactose intolerant, or (2) Their bowels are damaged by too frequent bouts with wheat gluten and will no longer digest milk.

I'm not surprised that a virus could "trigger" IBS. It's known, for example, that minor bowel surgery (e.g. sigmoidoscopic examination) can trigger Wheat Gluten Intolerance and/or Celiac Disease in people with any one of the 11 different genes that can cause Celiac Disease.

I'd do a serious DNA study of the kids in the sample group and see if they had any of those genes.

Researchers frequently forget that in the mid 1600s the Swedes nearly denuded the Sapma of Sa'ami and shipped them off to America to cut trees for timber to sell to the British (and Swedish) navies.

Those people's descendents live in places like Pennsylvania, Ontario, etc.

Until recently it had been believed that Celiac Disease affected about 1.2% of populations in Western and Northern Europe. Then, the Finns began checking genes and discovered that 3.4% of populations in Finland have such genes in the requisite numbers. Because of the forced relocation of the Sa'ami to America, it's quite possible that old American and Canadian populations have as high a degree of this problem as do the Finns (noting that the Sa'ami were already known to have a high incidence).

Celiac, though, is an autosomal recessive so you don't come down with it unless you have two such genes (one from your father and one from your mother).

That gives you 3.4% with two genes, another 3.4% with one gene from their father, and a different 3.4% with one gene from their mother. Doggone'd if I'm not coming up with 10.2% of the population having at least one of those genes.

That's pretty close to the IBS folks who pop up out of the background of those who'd been sickened by e.coli!

Maybe e.coli infection allows the Celiac genes to show up as IBS later on in life?

The other health problems noted in this study can all be traced to substantial Sa'ami ancestry.

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