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World J Gastroenterol. Feb 7, 2019; 25(5): 552-566
Published online Feb 7, 2019. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v25.i5.552
Functional gastrointestinal disorders and gut-brain axis: What does the future hold?
Kashif Mukhtar, Hasham Nawaz, Shahab Abid
Kashif Mukhtar, Centre of Excellence in Women and Child Health, Aga Khan University, Karachi, Sindh 74800, Pakistan
Hasham Nawaz, Shahab Abid, Department of Medicine, Section of Gastroenterology, Aga Khan University, Karachi, Sindh 74800, Pakistan
Author contributions: All authors equally contributed to this paper with conception and design of the study, literature review and analysis, drafting and critical revision and editing, and approval of the final version.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No potential conflicts of interest. No financial support.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Shahab Abid, PhD, MBBS, Professor, Department of Medicine, Section of Gastroenterology, Aga Khan University, Karachi, Sindh 74800, Pakistan. shahab.abid@aku.edu
Telephone: +92-333-3965940
Received: October 13, 2018
Peer-review started: October 14, 2018
First decision: November 1, 2018
Revised: December 19, 2018
Accepted: December 27, 2018
Article in press: December 27, 2018
Published online: February 7, 2019
Processing time: 111 Days and 2 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: The multifactorial nature of functional gastrointestinal disorders makes the diagnosis challenging. The identification of pathogenic microbiome signatures, combined with demographical, immunologic and neuroimaging findings can be encoded into machine learning algorithms which may help identify trends and patterns that can be studied to further our understanding of these disorders. These patterns can help determine the causality or can guide further research.