The study by Marasco et al, in Gut, was ambitious in its aim to employ an epidemiology survey to establish post-infection disorders of gut-brain interaction (PI-DGBI) as an entity distinct from other DGBIs.1 This, after all, was not a mechanistic study. However, if we take this study in conjunction with its mothership the Rome Foundation Global Epidemiology Study (RFGES) and her spawn, the data makes a compelling case for infection as a singular pathophysiology for DGBI.

The RFGES is a mammoth study recruiting at least 2000 subjects each from 33 countries worldwide. In the mothership study, that reported on the wider DGBI cohort, functional constipation (11.7%) was the most prevalent, followed by unspecified functional bowel disorders (8.8%), functional dyspepsia (FD) (7.1%), functional diarrhoea (4.7%), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) (4.1%) and functional bloating (3.5%).2 Essentially, it reinforced the typical profile of a DGBI patient, that is, female, constipation…