A STUDY OF ILLNESS IN A GROUP OF CLEVELAND FAMILIES: XII. THE ASSOCIATION OF RESPIRATORY AND GASTROINTESTINAL SYMPTOMS; AN ESTIMATION OF THE MAGNITUDE AND TIME RELATIONS OF THE ASSOCIATION1

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Abstract
Incidence of gastro-intestinal symptoms at various intervals from onset of common respiratory disease in the same individual was studied. As would be expected, gastrointestinal symptoms related to common respiratory disease, such as coughing or medication, had a high incidence at the time of respiratory disease. Incidence of gastrointestinal symptoms without apparent explanation, was also high at the time of common respiratory disease. The reasons for this are not clear. It was demonstrated, however, that this association occurred much more often than would have been expected as a result of the chance concurrence of independent gastrointestinal and respiratory diseases. It was not possible to distinguish, clinically or epidemiologically, cases that represented coincidental occurrence of gastrointestinal illness and a common respiratory disease in the same individual from cases that were in excess of the predicted number of such chance concurrences. The excess concurrence presumably consisted of cases in which the gastrointestinal and respiratory symptoms were causally related. This excess was estimated to make up 5% of all cases diagnosed as common respiratory disease and 20% of those that otherwise fulfilled the criteria of the present study for gastrointestinal illness.

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