A physiologic events' cascade, irritable bowel syndrome, may even terminate with urolithiasis

Aim: Approximately 10-20% of general population has irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and/or urolithiasis (U) and it seems that there is a significant association between them. Methods: We randomly took consecutive patients with and without IBS, among the cases applying to internal medicine polyclinic. U was diagnosed either by medical history or current findings. Results: Female/male ratio of IBS cases was 1.62. On the other hand, U was detected in 111 cases, totally, and female/male ratio was 0.94. So the rates of U were 13.7 and 15.2% in female and males, respectively. As a significant finding, U was detected in 61 (17.9%) of cases with IBS, whereas this ratio was 11.6% (50 in number) among the cases without (p < 0.01). On the other hand, there was no significant difference between groups of IBS and U according to obesity and hyperuricemia (p > 0.05 for both). Conclusions: Although IBS predominantly keeps females, relationship between IBS and U is still significant. IBS is probably a cascade of many physiological events, being initiated with infection, inflammation, psychological disturbances like many stresses and eventually terminating with gut dysfunction. So U may be one of the terminating points of the physiological events' cascade, IBS. By this way, the giant gap about the underlying etiologies of most of U cases may be explained by the high incidance of IBS in society. Keeping in mind this association will be helpful during prevention, treatment, and follow up of these pathologies.