Depressive mood and quality of life in functional gastrointestinal disorders: Differences between functional dyspepsia, irritable bowel syndrome and overlap syndrome

Objective: To investigate the differences in depressive mood and quality of life in patients with between functional dyspepsia (FD), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and FD-IBS overlap as diagnosed based on Rome III criteria. Methods: The subjects completed a questionnaire based on Rome III criteria, the Beck Depressive Inventory (BDI) including Cognitive Depression Index (CDI) for depressive mood evaluation and the 36-item Short Form general health survey (SF-36) for quality of life assessment. Upper gastrointestinal endoscopy and colonoscopy were performed to exclude organic disease. Results: Of 279 subjects, 70 and 124 subjects were diagnosed as FD and IBS, respectively. FD-IBS overlap patients (n=42) and FD alone patients (n=28) showed higher BDI scores than normal subjects (n=127) (P<001 and P=02, respectively), whereas that of IBS alone patients (n=82) did not show difference (P=17). All the SF-36 subscores of the FD-IBS overlap patients were significantly lower than normal subjects (P<05). Conclusions: Depressive mood was significantly related to FD and FD-IBS overlap but not to IBS based on Rome III criteria. FD-IBS overlap patients have worse quality of life than FD-alone and IBS-alone patients.