Case Control Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Pediatr. Sep 9, 2025; 14(3): 103590
Published online Sep 9, 2025. doi: 10.5409/wjcp.v14.i3.103590
Prematurity is a risk factor of disorders of gut-brain interaction in adults: A case-control study
Olivier Courbette, Camille Girard-Bock, Anik Cloutier, Thuy Mai Luu, Anne Monique Nuyt, Christophe Faure
Olivier Courbette, Christophe Faure, Department of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Sainte-Justine University Hospital Center, Montreal H3T1C5, Quebec, Canada
Camille Girard-Bock, Anik Cloutier, Thuy Mai Luu, Anne Monique Nuyt, Department of Pediatrics, Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center, Montreal H3T1C5, Quebec, Canada
Author contributions: Courbette O performed the statistical analysis; Courbette O and Faure C contributed to the concept and design of the study and draft the article; Courbette O, Girard-Bock C, Cloutier A, Luu TM, Nuyt AM and Faure C contributed to the acquisition and analysis of the data; all authors have read and approve the final manuscript.
Supported by Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center excellence grant in 2020-2021.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Institutional Review Board (Approval No. 2019-1949).
Informed consent statement: All study participants, or their legal guardian, provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No financial or non-financial benefits have been received or will be received from any party related directly or indirectly to the subject of this article.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement—checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement—checklist of items.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at olivier.courbette@hpu.lenval.com on request.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Olivier Courbette, MD, Department of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Sainte-Justine University Hospital Center, 3175 Chemin de la Côte Ste Catherine, Montreal H3T1C5, Quebec, Canada. olivier.courbette@gmail.com
Received: November 25, 2024
Revised: March 22, 2025
Accepted: April 15, 2025
Published online: September 9, 2025
Processing time: 204 Days and 12.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: In this study, using the Rome IV questionnaire, we assessed the prevalence of different disorders of gut-brain interaction (DGBI) in two populations: (1) Full-term; and (2) Preterm adults. Subsequently, we compared the results between these two populations and analyzed the risk factors for DGBI in the population of adults born prematurely using regression analysis. The group of adults born prematurely has a higher frequency of functional bowel problems. Functional constipation and functional gastroduodenal problems are substantially more common in prematurely born women than in controls. Ultimately, we confirm that extreme prematurity is a risk factor for developing a DGBI.