Is IBS hereditary?

Is IBS hereditary?

Lin Chang (UCLA Division of Digestive Diseases) gives expert video advice on: What causes IBS?; Can stress make IBS worse?; What can I tell people who insist my IBS is 'all in your head'? and more...

There is increasing evidence that there is a genetic predisposition, or that there is some hereditability associated with IBS. We do not completely understand that, but there are twin studies that have shown that identical twins will have a greater concordance of having IBS. It means that if one twin has it, the identical twin is more likely to have it than non-identical twins, where you don't share the same amount of genetic material. But what's interesting about those twin studies is it shows that even though there is a genetic factor that's important in IBS, the environmental factors are probably just as important, if not more important. So it's really multi-factorial.