About 20 percent of the adult population of the United States, and many other millions worldwide, are suffering from IBS, or Irritable Bowel Syndrome, a condition that, while non life-threatening, can be as annoying as it is painful. At the same time, IBS is also very hard to diagnose because its symptoms tend to overlap those of other affections, which makes it that many years can go by until it is spotted, if at all. Now, thanks to hard work from pharmaceutical company Prometheus, the first blood test to spot IBS is possible.
“Prometheus IBS Diagnostic is an exciting advancement in the field of functional gastrointestinal disease,” Dr. Anthony Lembo, MD, a gastroenterologist in the Division of Gastroenterology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medial Center and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, said. “This test complements current symptom-based diagnostic practices by identifying patients with biomarker patterns consistent or inconsistent with IBS.”
Research for the diagnostic tool was long and painstaking, involving almost 700 pathways, each including hundreds of potential IBS biomarkers, which were eventually narrowed down to 16 final ones. These were measured in a sample of 1,700 patients and then compared with another ten biomarkers. These, in turn, are associated with one of the following pathways related to digestion: motility, brain-gut axis, neuronal regulation and immune function, Prometheus reveals.
“IBS can be very difficult to definitively diagnose and is therefore often left untreated. Prometheus IBS Diagnostic is the first in a series of tests we are developing for this complex syndrome. It provides physicians a valuable tool to help clarify or validate other clinical findings. This test further strengthens our growing portfolio of proprietary, high-value diagnostics and complementary pharmaceutical products,” Joseph M. Limber, president and CEO of the pharmaceutical company, said.
IBS is not associated with any visible abnormality, which makes it all the more difficult to spot. Because its symptoms generally overlap those of inflammatory bowel disease, chronic functional constipation or diarrhea, or celiac disease, IBS is usually diagnosed through a process of elimination.
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