This activity is intended for the physician and other healthcare professionals specializing in the care of the patient with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
The goal of this activity is to familiarize the clinician with the clinical relevance of serotonergic signaling in the gut, mechanisms of visceral hypersensitivity, and the role of pathophysiology in understanding symptom presentation in IBS, all with a view toward implications for disease management.
Upon completion of this activity, participants will be able to:
Medscape, LLC is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
Medscape designates this educational activity for a maximum of 1.5 category 1 credits toward the AMA Physician's Recognition Award. Each physician should claim only those credits that he/she actually spent in the activity.
For questions regarding the content of this activity, contact the accredited provider for this CME/CE activity noted above. For technical assistance, contact [email protected]
There are no fees for participating in or receiving credit for this
online educational activity. For information on applicability and
acceptance of continuing education credit for this activity, please
consult your professional licensing board.
This activity is designed to be completed within the time
designated on the title page; physicians should claim only those
credits that reflect the time actually spent in the activity. To
successfully earn credit, participants must complete the activity
online during the valid credit period that is noted on the title page.
Follow these steps to earn CME/CE credit:
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Although there are a number of traditional and novel therapies for IBS, for contextual purposes, the scope of this review will be limited to discussion of the serotonergic agents. Excellent systematic reviews of IBS clinical treatment trials can be read for a more comprehensive discussion of available therapeutic agents.[47,48] As reiterated in these reviews, many of the traditional therapies are used to treat specific IBS symptoms because they have not been shown to significantly relieve global symptoms, which would improve an overall sense of well-being. However, the discovery of the serotonergic molecular targets has led to the development of novel medications and reevaluation of relatively older pharmacologic agents that also act on the serotonin system. In well-designed, multicenter clinical trials, these novel serotonergic agents have been shown to be effective in treating global symptoms in patients with IBS compared with placebo.