Original articleSystematic review and meta-analysesGlobal Prevalence of and Risk Factors for Irritable Bowel Syndrome: A Meta-analysis
Section snippets
Search Strategy and Study Selection
A literature search was performed by using EMBASE Classic and EMBASE (1947 to October 2011) and MEDLINE (1948 to October 2011) to identify only cross-sectional surveys published in full that reported the prevalence of IBS in adults (aged 15 years and older). Studies were required to recruit participants from the general population or community. Those that reported the prevalence of IBS in convenience samples such as university students, employees at an institution, or those attending screening
Results
The search strategy identified 20,146 citations. From these we identified 390 that appeared to be relevant to the study question. There were 81 studies that fulfilled the eligibility criteria and represented 80 separate adult study populations (Supplementary Figure 1).2, 20, 21, 22, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84,
Discussion
This systematic review and meta-analysis has assembled data from all available and identified population-based cross-sectional surveys that report the prevalence of IBS in the community. It has demonstrated that prevalence varies strikingly, from 1% to more than 45%, according to the geographic location of the population under study. The criteria used to define presence of IBS also led to differences in prevalence, which was lowest when the Rome I criteria were used and highest with the
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Professor Paul Moayyedi for producing Figure 2 of the article, Mr Mark R. C. Lovell and Dr Cathy Yuhong Yuan for assisting us with the translation of foreign language articles, Professor Nicholas J. Talley and Dr G. Richard Locke III for answering our queries about their studies, and Dr Linda B. Olafsdottir for providing us with extra data concerning her study.
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Conflicts of interest The authors disclose no conflicts.