Papers of the Week

The etiology of abdominal pain in post-infectious, diarrhea-predominant IBS (PI-IBS-D) is unknown and few treatment options exist. Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT), an enzyme that inactivates and degrades biologically active catecholamines, plays an important role in numerous physiologic processes, including modulation of pain perception. Our objective was to determine the mechanism(s) of how decreased colonic COMT in PI-IBS-D patients contributes to the chronic abdominal pain phenotype following enteric infections.