Question:medium
The differentiating feature between irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and organic gastrointestinal disease is:
The differentiating feature between irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and organic gastrointestinal disease is:
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Look for the only option that is an objective marker of mucosal inflammation, not a shared symptom.
Updated On: Jun 23, 2026
- Diarrhea
- Stool calprotectin
- Abdominal pain
- Mucus in stools
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The Correct Option is B
Solution and Explanation
Sort the options into two buckets. Three of them, diarrhea, abdominal pain, and mucus in stool, are symptoms a patient reports, and every one of them appears in both IBS and organic bowel disease, so they cannot draw a line between the two conditions. The fourth, stool calprotectin, is a laboratory biomarker, and that is the giveaway. Calprotectin is shed by neutrophils into the gut lumen wherever there is active mucosal inflammation, so it is high in inflammatory bowel disease and low in the non inflammatory, functional IBS. That is exactly why clinicians order it: a low faecal calprotectin lets you confidently call a case functional and avoid an unnecessary colonoscopy, while a high value pushes you toward endoscopic evaluation for organic pathology. Other supportive stool markers exist (alpha 1 antitrypsin, lysozyme, lactoferrin), but calprotectin is the workhorse. Hence the answer is stool calprotectin.
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