Health related quality of life in irritable bowel syndrome patients, Kashan, Iran: A case control study

Irritable bowel syndrome has significant impacts on the quality of life (QOL) but IBS subtypes may be different in QOL. This study aimed to assess QOL in IBS subtypes and also two prevalent questionnaires applied to evaluate the QOL in IBS.

In this case-control study conducted in Kashan in 2010-2013. One hundred and eighty- eight patients with IBS with 215 of non-IBS patients were included in the baseline. Subjects divided into three subtypes based on symptoms of diarrhea-predominant (IBS-D), constipation-predominant (IBS-C) and IBS with mixed bowel habits (IBS-M) and in each subtype were 42, 62 and 84 patients, respectively. All IBS subjects completed questionnaires containing the disease-specific QOL for IBS (IBSQOL), World Health Organization QOL Assessment-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF) and IBS severity scores (IBSSS). The non-IBS subjects completed the WHOQOL-BREF only.

Mean scores of IBSQOL in person with subtypes of IBS-D, IBS-C and IBS-M were 74.34 ± 19.01, 76.77 ± 22.91 and 73.15 ± 26.51, respectively which was not significantly different (P value = 0.507). As well as mean scores of WHOQOL-BREF in person with subtypes of IBS-D, IBS-C and IBS-M were 81.01 ± 16.23, 88.32 ± 15.66, and 82.65 ± 16.67, respectively, which were not significantly different (P value = 0.412) but mean scores of WHOQOL-BREF in non-IBS subjects was 89.53 ± 11.71 which was significantly different from IBS subjects (P value = 0.022). Strong positive relationship between two instruments was shown (r = 0.826 when P < 0.05).

The WHOQOL-BREF instrument showed poorer QOL in IBS patients. The QOL was not different significantly among IBS-M, IBS-C, and IBS-D subtypes. We found that WHOQOL-BREF instrument strongly correlate with QOLIBS instrument.