Can a Gluten-free Diet Help Some IBS Patients?

Celiac.com 05/26/2017 - Can a gluten-free diet help improve symptoms in people suffering from IBS? A new study says yes, some of them, at least.

More than 60% of patients with IBS suffer from bloating and abdominal pain after eating certain foods. In some patients, who do not have celiac disease or wheat allergy, these symptoms may be due to an adverse reaction to wheat and gluten.

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Several studies have suggested that anti-gliadin antibodies can be a useful benchmark for predicting which patients with irritable bowel syndrome will benefit from a gluten-free diet. However, the idea remained untested until recently, when researchers conducted a prospective study in IBS patients.

An update on their research was presented at Digestive Disease Week. The research was conducted by María Inés Pinto Sanchez, MD, and colleagues at the department of medicine at McMaster University and the Farncombe Institute in Ontario, Canada.

To better understand the usefulness of these predictors, the research team looked at 44 patients with IBS and 23 healthy volunteers, both before and after 1 month of adhering to a gluten-free diet. They assessed GI transit, GI symptoms, anxiety, depression, somatization and dietary habits. The team tested each subject for anti-gliadin antibodies, then stratified the patients based on the results. Patients with celiac disease were not included in the study.

The investigators found that just over half (53%) of the IBS patients, and 25% of the healthy volunteers, tested positive for IgA or IgC anti-gliadin antibodies. Additionally, HLA DQ2/DQ8 genetic predisposition was comparable for both groups.

IBS patients who tested positive for antigliadin antibodies, and who followed a gluten-free diet, showed overall improvement in symptoms, especially constipation (P = 0.01), diarrhea (P = 0.001) and abdominal pain (P < 0.001) while IBS patients who tested negative only experienced improvements in abdominal pain (P = 0.01). Compared with patients who tested negative, gluten-free IBS patients who tested positive saw more normalization in GI transit (OR = 1.75 95% CI, 1.06 - 3.06).

Regardless of antibody status, all IBS patients saw comparable improvements in anxiety, somatization and well-being, but only patients who tested positive saw reduced depression scores.

A gluten-free diet in patients who tested positive for anti-gliadin antibodies was associated with symptomatic improvement (OR = 8.54; 95% CI, 1.41-48.21), while other factors like changes in motility, dietary adherence or genetic risk were not.

Their data led the team to conclude that anti-gliadin antibodies can be used to determine which IBS patients are more likely to see an improvement in symptoms, and in functionality.

Interestingly, strict compliance with the gluten-free diet did not predict improvement, which indicates that gluten restriction, rather than gluten avoidance, may help to manage symptoms in these IBS patients. That means that patients might be able to get better by cutting back on gluten, instead of cutting it out of their diet entirely.

Read more at Healio.com.