ELSEVIER Brief Report This section will carry communications of work in progress, preliminary research reports, or interesting and unusual vignettes. Such reports will be considered for their practical clinical relevance or heuristic value. Brief Report Eating Attitudes and the Irritable Bowel Syndrome Gary Sullivan, M.R.C.G.P., M.R.C.Ps Peter L. Jenkins, M.R.C.Psych, EAT K ch, Andrew E. Blewett, M.R.C.Psych, ., and Miles C. Allison, M.D., M.R.C.P. Abstract: A series of 48 new patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) were as,ked to complete an Eating Attitudes Test. The same test was given to a series of 32 patients attend- ing an Eating Disorder clinic, a series of 32 patients attending a gastroenterology outpatient clinic with a diagnosis of inffam- matory bowel disease CIBDJ, and to a group of 28 ‘normal’ controls. The results showed that there was no significant difference between the IBD group and control groups for EAT score. The EAT score for the group with eating disorders was significantly higher than for all other groups. The EAT score for the IBS group was greater than those for the IBD and control group (p = 0.05) when all four groups were compared using analysis of variance and the Least Significant Difference test. 0 1997 Elsevier Science Inc. Introduction Hudson and Pope I1 1 applied a treatment-response model to the medical literature based on response to treatment with antidepressants. They argued that response to antidepressants identified a group of disorders that have a common pathophysiology: major depression, bulimia, panic disorder, obses- sive-compulsive disorder, attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity,, cataplexy, migraine, and irri- table bowel syndrome. Several other conditions were not included because sufficient trials had not been reported in the literature, but Hudson and Pope considered posttraumatic stress disorder and St. Cadoc’s Hospital, Caerleon, Gwent, NP6 IXQ, United Kingdom (G.S., P.L.J.), The Redcliffe Centre, 51, Hatton Park Road, Wellingborough, Northampton, NN8 3AH, UR, and Royal Gwent Hospital, Newport, Gwent, UK Address reprint requests to: Gary Sullivan, M.R.C.G.P., M.R.C.Psych, St. Cadoc’s Hospital, Caerleon, Gwent, NP6 IXQ, UK. 62 ISSN 0163-8343/97/$17.00 PII SO163-8343(96)00106-5 atypical facial pain to be ‘promising’ candidates for inclusion. The affective spectrum disorder concept predicts that all forms of the disorder will show frequent comorbidity with one another, especially with ma- jor affective disorder. The relatives of people with these disorders should have a higher incidence of the other disorders in the group, particularly major affective disorder, than in the families of controls. With regard to irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), if one pools studies that have used psychiatric diag- noses based on research diagnostic criteria, there does appear to be increased psychiatric comorbid- ity in patients with IBS, but it remains unclear if this applies to IBS nonpatients in the community. The leading diagnoses are hysteria (20%), depression (20%), and anxiety disorder (14%) 121. There is also some evidence that the incidence of depression in the families of people with IBS is greater than in the families of controls [31. Lydiard et al. [41 described five cases of comorbid IBS and panic disorder and suggested that some patients with IBS may have a primary anxiety dis- order. They also noted retrospectively that 18 (44%) of 41 consecutively admitted patients with panic disorder had gastrointestinal complaints. Katon [51 noted that one-third of a series of 55 patients in a general hospital diagnosed by psychiatrists as hav- ing panic disorder had presented with gastrointes- tinal complaints. Noyes et al. 161 found that 5 of 30 patients with panic disorder fulfilled the Thompson criteria for IBS 171 compared with none of 30 con- trols. Further evidence for a link between IBS and panic disorder was provided by Lydiard et al. [8] who looked at 13,537 respondents at four sites of General Hospital Psychiatry 19,62-64,1997 0 1997 Elsevier Science Inc. 655 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10010