Is Constipation Associated with Worse Functioning in Adult Women? A Cross-Sectional Study

The aim of this study is to analyze the relationship between intestinal constipation and functioning in adult women living in a municipality in the interior of northeast Brazil.

This is a cross-sectional study conducted with 195 adult women in the city of Santa Cruz-RN. Constipation was diagnosed using the Rome III criteria. Functioning was measured through WHODAS 2.0. Social conditions, habits and lifestyle were also investigated. Inferential analysis was performed using the chi-squared test and the Mann-Whitney U-test, and the effect size was determined by eta squared (η²). Multivariate analysis was performed using multiple linear regression to analyze the relationship between the WHODAS total score and constipation, being adjusted by covariates with p≤0.20 in the bivariate. A statistical significance level of p<0.05 was considered.

Most of the participants in this study were aged 19 to 39 years (69.7%) and had an income of up to 1 minimum monthly salary (79.5%). WHODAS scores showed that women with constipation had more disability in the cognitive (p <0.001), mobility (p <0.002), self-care (p <0.001), and participation (p <0.001) domains, as well as the total score (p <0.001). After multiple linear regression analysis, the total WHODAS score remained associated with constipation (p <0.001), in which this condition increases the score by nine points.

The results of this study show that there is a reduction in functioning associated with the presence of constipation in adult women, mainly affecting the cognition, mobility, self-care and participation domains, in addition to the total score.