Physical Activity and Its Relationship with Patient Characteristics, Symptoms, Quality of Life, and Depression in Irritable Bowel Syndrome-A Cross-Sectional Study

Aim: To investigate physical activity and its relationship with symptoms, quality of life (QoL), and depression in patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).Material and Methods: Eighty IBS patients (42 female, 38 male) were included. Subtypes of IBS, patient characteristics, symptoms (Gastrointestinal Symptom Rating Scale), QoL Irritable Bowel Syndrome Quality of Life Scale (IBS-QoL), depression (Beck Depression Scale), and physical activity (International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ)) were assessed. Abdominal pain severity was evaluated with visual analogue scale (VAS).Results: The demographic and clinical characteristics of the IBS subtypes (IBS-constipation IBS-C=36, IBS-diarrhea IBS-D=20, IBS-mixed IBS-M=24) were similar (p0.05). The mean of abdominal pain VAS was 5.81±1.92. Most of the participants were minimally active (n=44, 55%) and inactive (n=29, 36.3%). IBS-M had worse interpersonal relationships (p=0.006) and was more depressed (p=0.020) than the IBS-C. Patient characteristics did not show a significant correlation with physical activity (p0.05). Physical activity had a moderate correlation with symptoms (r=-0.508, p0.001) and QoL (r=0.467, p0.001), and had a weak correlation with depression (r=-0.284, p=0.001) in all participants. Physical activity had a moderate negative correlation with symptom severity (r=-0.421-(-0.596); p=0.011, p=0.006, p=0.009) and a positive moderate correlation with QoL (r=0.415-0.568; p=0.006, p=0.009, p=0.044), but no significant correlation with depression (p=0.106-0.357) in IBS-C, IBS-D, and IBS-M subtypes, respectively.Conclusion: IBS patients had low levels of physical activity. There were negative correlations between symptom severity and depression and physical activity levels, while QoL demonstrated a positive correlation in all participants.