News Release

CHAPEL HILL -- The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Center for Functional GI & Motility Disorders has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to foster interdisciplinary research on interactions between the mind and body in health and disease, with a specific focus on the causes and treatment of functional gastrointestinal disorders.

The five-year, $4.3 million grant will establish a Gastrointestinal Biopsychosocial Research Center within the UNC Center for Functional GI & Motility Disorders, a part of the School of Medicine.

"We are very pleased to be funded through the NIH initiative on mind-body interactions and health," said Dr. William E. Whitehead, co-principal investigator for the NIH grant and co-director of the UNC Center for Functional GI & Motility Disorders.

"This grant will enable us to carry out longer-term collaborations with other disciplines in health and medicine, and with a variety of institutions nationally and internationally. We are excited about the prospects for using this award to build on our longstanding record of NIH-funded research in mind-body interactions and to develop both new research partners and new areas of research."

The NIH mind-body initiative, a cooperative effort of multiple NIH institutes, evolved from growing evidence that interdisciplinary research that integrates the study of social, behavioral, psychological and biological factors holds particular promise in understanding the causes of disease and in promoting health.

The NIH funded the first five mind-body centers in 1999. An additional five centers were selected for funding in 2004, with funding for UNC’s grant being provided through the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

Research at the UNC Center for Functional GI & Motility Disorders has included studies related to the illness and treatment of such prevalent functional GI disorders as irritable bowel syndrome, functional dyspepsia, functional abdominal pain, fecal incontinence and constipation.

Irritable bowel syndrome is a chronic, recurring disease affecting 30 million Americans, or between 10 percent and 20 percent of the U.S. population, and is associated with $25 billion in direct and indirect costs annually, statistics from the International Foundation for Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders indicate.

Research conducted by Dr. Douglas A. Drossman, co-principal investigator for the NIH grant and co-director of the UNC Center for Functional GI & Motility Disorders, and colleagues has shown that irritable bowel syndrome accounts for considerable work and school absenteeism. People with IBS miss three times as many workdays as those without bowel symptoms and are more likely to report they are too sick to work.

Examples of mind-body research at the center include the role of stress, abuse history and other psychosocial factors in IBS, hereditary and learned-behavior aspects of IBS and recurrent abdominal pain, effects of reproductive hormones on IBS, and the tendency of IBS to co-exist with other disorders.

Center researchers have also studied the effectiveness of treatment strategies that combine cognitive behavior therapy, hypnosis, antidepressants or patient education with medications for IBS, biofeedback for fecal incontinence and constipation.

The new Gastrointestinal Biopsychosocial Research Center will be used to support core resources in a number of areas. The research center will facilitate large-scale, multi-center studies, help establish systems for automated telephone responses to surveys and Internet-administered questionnaires and provide seed grants for pilot projects of young investigators.

"With the help of this grant, the UNC Center for Functional GI & Motility Disorders will become universitywide, including investigators from psychology, psychiatry, surgery (gynecology division), neuroradiology, dentistry, the School of Public Health and other disciplines," Whitehead said.

The UNC Center for Functional GI & Motility Disorders was established in 1994 as a center of excellence within the School of Medicine’s division of gastroenterology and hepatology.

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UNC Center for Functional GI & Motility Disorders contact: Kirsten Nyrop, (919) 966-0289 or knyrop@med.unc.edu

UNC News Services contact: Deb Saine, (919) 962-8415 or deborah_saine@unc.edu