Abstract

Background

Up to 60% of patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) report fatigue and 50% meet criteria for clinical insomnia. Recent studies have demonstrated a relationship between poor sleep and next-day IBS symptoms. However, no study to-date has evaluated behavioral therapy to treat poor sleep in IBS.

Aims

The aim of the current pilot study is to test feasibility of behavioral therapy for insomnia among patients with IBS and poor sleep.

Methods

This randomized controlled pilot study tested the feasibility of administering brief behavioral therapy for insomnia (BBT-I) to patients with IBS who report poor sleep. Participants were randomized to BBT-I or self-monitoring control. Exploratory analyses evaluated group differences after 4 weeks of treatment.

Results

A total of 25 participants were randomized to the study, 13 to BBT-I and 12 to the control group. Three participants dropped out of the treatment group. Satisfaction with treatment was high. At follow-up, there were significant differences between groups in measures of sleep quality and insomnia severity. There were trends toward significance in IBS severity score, with 40% of the BBT-I sample reporting clinically meaningful drop in symptoms compared to 17% of the control group. Similar trends were observed with belly pain and global improvement scores.

Conclusions

This pilot study demonstrates feasibility/acceptability of a brief behavioral therapy for patients with IBS and poor sleep. Additionally, this study provides preliminary evidence to suggest that treatment of sleep difficulties in patients with IBS may improve IBS symptom outcomes. Future, larger randomized controlled studies are needed.

中文翻译：

---

肠易激综合征患者失眠的简要行为疗法：一项初步研究

摘要

背景

多达60％的肠易激综合征（IBS）患者报告疲劳，而50％的患者符合临床失眠标准。最近的研究表明，不良睡眠与第二天IBS症状之间存在关联。但是，迄今为止，尚无研究评估行为疗法来治疗IBS中的不良睡眠。

目的

当前的前期研究的目的是测试行为疗法治疗IBS和睡眠不良患者失眠的可行性。

方法

这项随机对照的先导研究测试了对睡眠不良的IBS患者进行短暂的失眠行为治疗（BBT-1）的可行性。参与者被随机分配到BBT-1或自我监测的对照组。探索性分析评估了治疗4周后的组差异。

结果

共有25名受试者被随机分配至研究，13名受试者被分配至BBT-1，12名受试者被分配至对照组。三名参与者退出治疗组。对治疗的满意度很高。随访时，两组的睡眠质量和失眠严重程度之间存在显着差异。IBS严重性评分有显着趋势，BBT-1样本中有40％的患者报告临床意义上的症状减轻，而对照组为17％。腹部疼痛和整体改善得分也观察到类似趋势。

结论

这项初步研究证明了对IBS和睡眠不良的患者进行简短行为疗法的可行性/可接受性。此外，这项研究提供了初步证据，表明治疗IBS患者的睡眠困难可能会改善IBS症状的预后。将来需要更大的随机对照研究。