Bowel Habits and Bowel Movement Disorders in a South-western Nigerian Population: A Community-based Study

There are few population-based studies concerning the bowel habits of adult Nigerians. Only one of these was published about a decade ago in the Northcentral region, the others were published over four decades ago. This study was conducted to determine the bowel habits and the frequencies of bowel movement disorders among adults in a Southwestern Nigerian population.

The study was a community-based cross-sectional survey of a cohort of Nigerian adults aged 18 to 70 years. The data collection instrument consisted of demographic information, lifestyle factors, abdominal circumference, bowel habits, and the Rome IV bowel disorder questionnaire questions regarding bowel movement disorders. A copy of the Bristol Stool Scale was shown to each respondent to allow easy evaluation of stool form. Summary statistics included Means, frequencies and percentages. Associations between categorical variables were tested by Chi-square test or Fisher exact test as required. The statistical significance cut-off was set at P-value < 0.05.

Adequate data for statistical analysis was available for 506 participants. The majority, 492 (97.2%), had at least one bowel motion per day [358 (70.8%) once daily, 111 (21.9%) twice daily and 23 (4.5%) > twice daily], 9 (1.8%) defaecate once in two days while 5 (1.0%) defaecate once in 3 or more days. There was no significant relationship between the frequency of bowel movement and age or gender. Among those who had bowel movement disorders, at least 30% of time in 3 months, the commonest disorder was passage of hard stools [66 (13.0%)] while the least frequent was bowel motion of fewer than 3 times per week [27 (5.3%)].

The majority of our study participants have normal bowel habits. The frequencies of bowel movement disorders are generally low in the study population and this may be related to the consumption of the African diet that is rich in fibre content.