Do you have irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and wondering if there's an IBS blood test? In this video, we'll explore IBS blood testing, covering some of the more common IBS blood tests and specific IBS blood tests that can help you track your progress as you undergo IBS treatment.

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Reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

In this video, we'll delve into IBS blood tests and how they can help us track treatment progress. Let's first discuss IBS in general. IBS was initially diagnosed by exclusion, meaning we ruled out everything else that could potentially be causing your digestive symptoms. If nothing was found, digestively speaking, you would be told you have IBS or irritable bowel syndrome.

This simplistic approach didn't sit well with those carefully studying people suffering from IBS. And for sure, some underlying factors were overlooked in the earlier days of IBS treatment. In the last decade or so, there have been significant advancements in research, leading to insights into what's specifically causing IBS. We've identified specific food triggers like high FODMAP foods and high histamine foods. Additionally, we now have diagnostic tests for things like SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) and post-infectious IBS. On the horizon, there are even more possibilities in terms of diagnostic testing, such as microbial investigations of SIFO (small intestinal fungal overgrowth), the VIROME, and potentially even phage therapy.

The challenge with testing has always been and still is, to a certain extent, its cost. Research has led to the development of tests that allow us to diagnose some of these underlying factors. For instance, the lactulose breath test can help us diagnose SIBO, a common cause of IBS. And there's also an IBS smart test, an IBS blood test, that assesses whether you have post-infectious IBS.

While these tests can be incredibly helpful, they carry a significant cost burden. Especially since insurance often doesn't cover them, they can run a couple of hundred dollars per test. This isn't too much for an initial diagnosis, but you may need to run the test two, three, or even four times to have absolute certainty about your treatment progress and understand where you stand.

So, what about other blood tests for IBS? That's what I want to discuss today – other signs that we can use to triangulate and understand whether or not you're on the right track with your treatments and diagnosis. For this, we can look at a research paper from my own clinical practice on testing for inflammation and how it's connected to IBS. We know for sure that the immune system is closely related to your digestive tract, and inflammation is one of the signs that your immune system is fighting something off or is in a heightened state of alert. The first evidence of an inflammatory component for IBS was reported back in the 1960s, demonstrating that IBS patients had a higher number of mast cells in their intestinal wall compared to healthy subjects.

More recent studies have provided additional details, revealing abnormalities in biopsies of their intestinal mucosa. These biopsies showed an increased number of immune cells such as lymphocytes, neutrophils, and mast cells compared to healthy controls.

Traditionally, IBS was thought not to be an inflammatory process, while IBD was considered more of an inflammation or inflammatory digestive problem driven more by autoimmunity.

Even though we have this research, it was believed not to be a general inflammatory process. However, in the last decade or so, we have learned more about the involvement of the immune system in cases of IBS, particularly from post-infectious sources. Of course, this makes sense, as the immune system is frequently engaged in infections, including those in the upper respiratory system, and the same holds true for digestive infections.