Prevalence of HIV infection among ex-prisoners in England.

More research is required to clarify patients' reasons for seeking medical advice and their expectations of their medical attendants so that the clinical care of patients with these common symptoms can be improved.

Abstract

medical advice for them.Men as well as women often experience these symptoms, and consultation be- haviour is likely to explain previous assertions that irritable bowel syndrome is experienced predominantly by women.The patients with the syndrome reported here also had rectal bleeding much more commonly than subjects without the syndrome, but consultation rates for rectal bleeding are also low.We still have a poor understanding of the triggers to consultation among these patients.Studies from North America have reported that psychopathology is more frequent in consulting than non-consulting patients with irritable bowel syndrome but is not a feature of the syndrome itself.725More research is required to clarify patients' reasons for seeking medical advice and their expectations of their medical attendants so that the clinical care of patients with these common symptoms can be improved.We thank all the participating general practitioners and their patients for their cooperation, the Scientific Foundation Board of the Royal College of General Practitioners and Duphar Laboratories Ltd for their support, and Professor Michael Farthing for helpful suggestions.