Global Prevalence of Irritable Bowel Syndrome: An Updated Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a functional gastrointestinal disorder characterized by abdominal pain and alterations in bowel habits. Previous studies show variability in its prevalence according to region and diagnostic criteria used. The objective was to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of the global prevalence of IBS, considering studies that used Rome III and IV criteria. Methods: A systematic search was conducted in Scopus, Embase, PubMed, Web of Science, and Scielo through March 2024. Observational studies reporting IBS prevalence using Rome III or IV criteria were included. Studies in specific populations, conference abstracts, and gray literature were excluded. Methodological quality was assessed using Munn's tool for prevalence studies. Meta-analyses were performed using random-effects models with Freeman-Tukey double arcsine transformation, subgroup analyses by probabilistic sampling, meta-regressions by year, and publication bias assessment through funnel plots. Results: Forty-three studies (26 Rome III, 17 Rome IV) with 188,885 participants were included. The global prevalence was 13.21% (95% confidence interval (CI): 10.70-15.94%) with Rome III and 17.14% (95% CI: 12.00-22.99%) with Rome IV. When considering only studies with probabilistic sampling, prevalences adjusted to 11.19% and 13.28%, respectively. Higher prevalence was found in women (Rome III: 15.69% vs. 11.10% in men; Rome IV: 20.17% vs. 11.45%). Meta-regression showed a trend toward increased prevalence in recent years. Conclusion: Rome IV showed a higher prevalence than Rome III, possibly due to a more precise definition of abdominal pain. The heterogeneity found suggests the need to standardize methodologies and conduct more studies with probabilistic sampling, especially in underrepresented regions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".