Eating attitudes and the irritable bowel syndrome

A series of 48 new patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) were asked to complete an Eating Attitudes Test. The same test was given to a series of 32 patients attending an Eating Disorder clinic, a series of 31 patients attending a gastroenterology outpatient clinic with a diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and to a group of 28 'normal' controls. The results showed that there was no significant difference between the IBD group and control groups for EAT score. The EAT score for the group with eating disorders was significantly higher than for all other groups. The EAT score for the IBS group was greater than those for the IBD and control group (p = 0.05) when all four groups were compared using analysis of variance and the Least Significant Difference test.