Does anyone know if and how this disease can affect your bowel? Katrina x

That is a good question as I have had bowel problems just about as long as I have had this disease but I was contributing it to the various meds. Perhaps it is the disease instead. Hmmmm.... You got me to thinking... I will look that up and see what I can find.

Hi I have coeliac disease too, which is another auto immune disease. It manifests itself in many different ways, causing diarrhoea, constipation, fatigue, mouth ulcers, headaches, etc, different symptoms for different people, so sometimes hard for doctors to diagnose. There is a specific coeliac blood test that you can request, and if that is positive then a endoscopy of the GI tract is a definitive diagnosis. It is important to keep eating gluten until a biopsy is done to avoid a false negative result. I think that there are other bowel diseases that are auto immune also...is Crohns?? I don't know about Anti Synthetase causing bowel problems, unless the passage of food through the gut is slower because of muscle weakness perhaps? Be interesting to know what you find out! Alison

I had bowel problems develop about 8 years before Raynaud's and lung damage. Irritable Bowel Syndrome was my first diagnosis, verified through colonoscopy. I was diagnosed with dermatomyositis and ASS about 6 months ago. An open lung biopsy was done about 2 years ago to verify Interstitial Lung Disease and BOOP. I had a few autoimmune disease misdiagnoses before ASS. I switched rheumatologists and that was a good choice.My current rheumatologist is at a teaching hospital and he is the one who diagnosed ASS. My symptoms now fit very well. My mechanic's hands and arthritis seem to wax and wane according to how much prednizone I'm taking (currently 10mg and I hurt!). My predinizone has ranged from 80mg per day all the way to none, but I've been unable to stop predinizone completely without having flare ups. I'm also on 150mg azathioprine, 90mg nifedipine for blood pressure and to treat Raynaud's and Bactrim. My current lung capacity is around 60%, holding steady for a good while.

Thanks guys. I saw the gastro motility specialist two weeks ago. He felt the illness was obviously affecting my bowel and maybe my liver ?gallbladder. I am going for a colonoscopy and gastroscopy as I was diagnosed with gastritis in 2004 before everything else so they want to make sure they don't miss anthing else. He said the bowel can fibrose as with the heart and lungs.This causes motilty problems. I also need to have anorectal studies which to be quite honest sound to painful to think about at the moment. I'll keep you posted. Katrina x