Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Irritable Bowel Syndrome

We read with interest the article “Feacal Calprotectin in Dermatology Practice”.¹ The authors discuss the potential use of feacal calprotectin in assessing for inflammatory bowel disease in dermatology practice. Yet, it is important to clarify disease definitions. The article includes the phrase irritable bowel disease, which is not used within the gastrointestinal field. Rather, IBD refers to inflammatory bowel disease in which patients have an underlying mucosal inflammation.² IBD includes both ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. On the other hand, IBS refers to irritable bowel syndrome, a functional bowel disorder characterized by recurrent abdominal pain at least one day a week for the last three months and is related to defecation or associated with a change in stool frequency or form.³ To further complicate definitions, research has indicated an overlap between both IBD and IBS such that some individuals with IBD have cooccurring IBS (known as IBD-IBS).^{4, 5} Although the acronyms are similar and patients can have overlapping disease, it is important to be clear on the meaning: IBD as inflammatory bowel disease and IBS as irritable bowel syndrome. It is possible that the title “dermatological manifestations of irritable bowel disease” was supposed to be inflammatory bowel disease since the paragraph speaks to cutaneous manifestations of inflammatory bowel disease. Questions 1 and 3 may also be places where the term “irritable bowel disease” may have been used when the authors meant to use “inflammatory bowel disease”. We hope that you and your readers will benefit from us noting these possible unintentional inconsistencies.