Lactulose Breath Testing: Not a Viable Diagnostic Tool

In a recent report published by the American Journal of Gastroenterology, researchers at Northwestern University used lactulose breath test to detect the excess growth of bacteria in the small bowel in subjects with IBS. In a study involving 224 patients with IBS and 40 controls, test results for patients with IBS were similar those of the control subjects without IBS. The researchers concluded that this method of diagnosis was not as useful as it was claimed in a prior study, which found evidence for abnormal growth of bacteria in the small bowel in the majority of subjects with IBS. An accompanying editorial also criticized the existance of a hypothetical correlation between IBS and SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth).Medscape, April 2008
2008-05-02 11:27:11