Constipation Predominant Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Functional Constipation Are Not Discrete Disorders: A Machine Learning Approach

INTRODUCTION: Chronic constipation is classified into 2 main syndromes, irritable bowel syndrome with constipation (IBS-C) and functional constipation (FC), on the assumption that they differ along multiple clinical characteristics and are plausibly of distinct pathophysiology. Our aim was to test this assumption by applying machine learning to a large prospective cohort of comprehensively phenotyped patients with constipation. METHODS:...