Diarrhea

The symptom of diarrhea can have many causes—some are outside the colon.

Diarrhea can be osmotically caused by food intolerance (lactose, fructose intolerance, histamine intolerance, gluten intolerance (celiac disease), exocrine pancreatic insufficiency), by increased intestinal motility in irritable bowel syndrome, by increased secretion by bacterial toxins or, more rarely, chologic (bile salts).

In addition to certain medications, chronic inflammatory bowel diseases (Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis) have chronic diarrhea as a key symptom together with mucus and blood loss. Acute onset diarrhea with a general feeling of illness often has infectious or toxic causes (rotaviruses, salmonella, clostridia, etc.).

A precise anamnesis together with a laboratory examination (stool culture, calprotectin, zonulin, elastase) can in some cases distinguish between infectious and other causes of diarrhea. In any case, an exact clarification should be carried out with a colonoscopy to rule out other causes, such as To exclude tumor diseases