C. difficile infection may lead to irritable bowel syndrome for some patients

About 20 percent of patients develop postinfection irritable bowel syndrome (PI-IBS) after Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI), according to a study.

PI-IBS has been shown to affect about 14 percent of patients after acute bacterial enterocolitis. In the current study, the researchers conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to determine the prevalence of PI-IBS following CDI.

The researchers accessed multiple online databases and identified 15 studies for inclusion in the meta-analysis. Of these, 10 studies were prospective and five were retrospective (nine full-text articles; six abstracts).

A total of 1,218 patients comprised the total study population. The pooled prevalence of PI-IBS, obtained using inverse variance heterogeneity model, was 21.1 percent (95 percent confidence interval, 8.2–35.7 percent), with substantial heterogeneity (I², 96 percent).

Diarrhoea-predominant PI-IBS (n=50; 46.3 percent) was the most common subtype, followed by mixed PI-IBS (n=36; 33.3 percent). In a priori subgroup analyses, neither time of IBS diagnosis nor CDI treatment significantly influenced the primary outcome (p>0.05 for all) or decreased heterogeneity.

Funnel plot analysis showed evidence of publication bias. The risk of bias was low in seven studies, medium in four, and high in four.

The researchers called for larger and well conducted studies to further examine PI-IBS in CDI.