There have been a number of research papers written on the topic including one co-authored by Dr. Drossman, co-Director of the UNC Center for Functional GI & Motility Disorders and ex-head of the ROME III committee.
Unfortunately, unless you are affiliated with a University or other organization that has a subscription to electronic journal you will not be able to read the full articles.
You probably know that the notion of a relationship between IBS and SIBO is highly controversial. Dr. Pimentel original proposed diagnosing SIBO by means of the lactulose hydrogen breath test and he reported positive tests in 78–84% of patients with IBS. However, more recent reports that did aspirations directly from the jejunum (the middle section of the small intestine) only found SIBO in only 4% of the IBS population and detected no differences from a healthy population.
The controversy on the relationship between SIBO and IBS is witnessed in the American College of Gastroentrology's report An Evidence-Based Systematic Review on the Management of Irritable Bowel Syndrome. It says "A great deal of attention has been focused on the potential role of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) in the pathogenesis of IBS symptoms. Available data on this topic have yielded conflicting results. On a practical level, currently there is no available gold standard test to diagnose SIBO. For these reasons, the Task Force feels that there is insufficient evidence to recommend the performance of lactulose or glucose breath tests to identify SIBO in patients with IBS."
It will be interesting to hear what you GI doctor says and finds
Good luck
-------------------- STABLE: ♂, IBS-D 50+ years - Science of IBS
Posts
Re: Syl-Prepping for hydrogen breath test and SIBO test?
