When Food Avoidance Meets Compatible Diagnostic Criteria: Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder Features in Irritable Bowel Syndrome: GI Signals

Motility prospective cohort · n=326 · Oct 1, 2026 · Neurogastro Motil · IF 3.5

When Food Avoidance Meets Compatible Diagnostic Criteria: Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder Features in Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

New evidenceIBSfunctional dyspepsiaepidemiologybiomarker

Clinical takeawayConsider screening IBS patients for DSM-5-compatible ARFID using validated tools like NIAS-Fr, particularly in those with depressive symptoms, severe IBS, or functional dyspepsia, to identify those at risk of medical/psychosocial impairment.

What it found33.4% of IBS patients met DSM-5-compatible ARFID criteria, defined by NIAS-Fr subscale cutoffs ('picky' ≥10, 'fear' ≥10, 'appetite' ≥9), medical/psychosocial impairment, and absence of eating disorder diagnosis, with depressive symptoms and IBS severity independently associated (Nagelkerke R2 = 0.203). Functional dyspepsia was prevalent in 60.4% of patients and associated with ARFID-like symptoms.

ContextRefines understanding of ARFID prevalence in IBS, distinguishing ARFID-like symptoms (47.5%) from DSM-5-compatible ARFID (33.4%), and highlights associations with depressive symptoms, IBS severity, and functional dyspepsia.

No standard claimed for this paper

Every paper is compared to the standard governing its question. This one is not: either no standard in the corpus matches it, or the comparison did not hold up on review and was withdrawn rather than published unverified. Both are logged.

Mikhael-Moussa H … Melchior C · Neurogastroenterology and Motility · IF 3.5 · PubMed ↗Permalink