Stress-Symptom Interaction in Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Longitudinal Digital Phenotyping Study.
6 affiliations
- 1Second Affiliated Hospital & Yuying Children's Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China.
- 2Xinjiang International Medical Center (Xinjiang International Hospital), Urumqi, China.
- 3Department of Gastroenterology, Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture People's Hospital, Yunnan, China.
- 4The Third Clinical School of Medicine, Xinjiang Medical University, Urumqi, Xinjiang, China.
- 5First Affiliated Hospital of Xinjiang Medical University, Urumqi, Xinjiang, China.
- 6Tumor Hospital of Xinjiang Medical University, Xinyi Road Campus, Urumqi, Urumqi, Xinjiang, 830011, China, 86 17799198234, 86 1-416-340-3200.
Abstract
Background
Stress and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) symptoms may vary over short time scales, but these dynamics are not well captured by intermittent clinical assessments.Objective
The study aimed to characterize exploratory time-varying stress-symptom patterns using intensive longitudinal monitoring and to evaluate a transparent, patient-clustered analysis framework.Methods
A prospective longitudinal design was used with 74 patients with IBD monitored for 90 days. Daily data comprised 12 core indicators and 2 auxiliary measures. The canonical analysis used patient-level partial-correlation PCMCI (Peter and Clark Momentary Conditional Independence) with a τ of 0 to 2, patient-specific network scaling, a fixed 30-day cycle-end stress contrast, exploratory module-control, and effective-information summaries, and a secondary exploratory time-varying effect model (TVEM).Results
Mean stress was higher during cycle days 26 to 30 (mean 4.789, SD 1.079) than during nonwindow days (mean 4.160, SD 1.013), with a mean within-person difference of 0.629 (95% CI 0.550-0.708; P<.001); 71 of 74 (95.9%) participants showed a positive difference. Symptom scores had the highest mean of 9.88 (SD 0.09) and lowest dispersion, whereas stressors showed greater variability (mean 3.68, SD 0.49). The estimated network showed predominant forward connections from psychosocial factors through emotion regulation and psychophysiological amplification indicators to gut-specific symptoms. The psychophysiological amplification module had the highest micro-to-macro flow efficiency and macro-level control metric. In the TVEM analysis, the full module-control and causal-emergence models explained 64.4% and 45.6% of the deviance, respectively.Conclusions
In this longitudinal IBD patient cohort, daily monitoring identified a reproducible end-of-cycle stress comparison and an exploratory multiscale organization that links psychosocial, emotional, psychophysiological, and gut-specific symptom domains. The psychophysiological amplification module provides the most informative, comprehensive representation, although its organization varies depending on follow-up and disease status. These findings support the use of digital phenotypes to generate clinical evidence for the coordination of stress symptoms, tailored to individual situations.
Related
- Fatigue burden and patient attribution across remission states in inflammatory bowel disease: a longitudinal cohort study.
- A miniaturized Arabidopsis thaliana - Botrytis cinerea seedling pathosystem and the GreenDayz workflow for longitudinal image-based phenotyping
- Longitudinal computational phenotyping reveals a stable marker for depression symptoms
- Optimizing Cognitive Phenotyping for Genetic Discovery in Alzheimer's Disease: A Simulation-Based Evaluation of Mini-Mental State Examination-Based Decline Measures
- Association between soil properties and Grapevine Leaf Stripe Disease (Esca Complex) symptom expression. Part I: soil physical, hydrological and chemical characteristics
BibTeX
@article{li2026stresssymptom,
title = {{Stress-Symptom Interaction in Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Longitudinal Digital Phenotyping Study.}},
author = {Zhihong Li and Yiliminuer Ahemai and Zimei Li and Qianqian Du and Wenwen Zheng and Shaohua Wang and Lazier Halimubai and Yan Wang and Yingbin Cai},
journal = {JMIR medical informatics},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.2196/95854},
url = {https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42954028},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Stress-Symptom Interaction in Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Longitudinal Digital Phenotyping Study.
AU - Zhihong Li
AU - Yiliminuer Ahemai
AU - Zimei Li
AU - Qianqian Du
AU - Wenwen Zheng
AU - Shaohua Wang
AU - Lazier Halimubai
AU - Yan Wang
AU - Yingbin Cai
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/22
JO - JMIR medical informatics
DO - 10.2196/95854
UR - https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42954028
AB - Background Stress and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) symptoms may vary over short time scales, but these dynamics are not well captured by intermittent clinical assessments.Objective The study aimed to characterize exploratory time-varying stress-symptom patterns using intensive longitudinal monitoring and to evaluate a transparent, patient-clustered analysis framework.Methods A prospective longitudinal design was used with 74 patients with IBD monitored for 90 days. Daily data comprised 12 core indicators and 2 auxiliary measures. The canonical analysis used patient-level partial-correlation PCMCI (Peter and Clark Momentary Conditional Independence) with a τ of 0 to 2, patient-specific network scaling, a fixed 30-day cycle-end stress contrast, exploratory module-control, and effective-information summaries, and a secondary exploratory time-varying effect model (TVEM).Results Mean stress was higher during cycle days 26 to 30 (mean 4.789, SD 1.079) than during nonwindow days (mean 4.160, SD 1.013), with a mean within-person difference of 0.629 (95% CI 0.550-0.708; P<.001); 71 of 74 (95.9%) participants showed a positive difference. Symptom scores had the highest mean of 9.88 (SD 0.09) and lowest dispersion, whereas stressors showed greater variability (mean 3.68, SD 0.49). The estimated network showed predominant forward connections from psychosocial factors through emotion regulation and psychophysiological amplification indicators to gut-specific symptoms. The psychophysiological amplification module had the highest micro-to-macro flow efficiency and macro-level control metric. In the TVEM analysis, the full module-control and causal-emergence models explained 64.4% and 45.6% of the deviance, respectively.Conclusions In this longitudinal IBD patient cohort, daily monitoring identified a reproducible end-of-cycle stress comparison and an exploratory multiscale organization that links psychosocial, emotional, psychophysiological, and gut-specific symptom domains. The psychophysiological amplification module provides the most informative, comprehensive representation, although its organization varies depending on follow-up and disease status. These findings support the use of digital phenotypes to generate clinical evidence for the coordination of stress symptoms, tailored to individual situations.
SN - 2291-9694
ER -