Muscle fibers (feces)

Muscle fibers (feces) too high

More muscle fibers than usual are often caused by eating a lot of meat or fish shortly before sample collection, poor chewing or diarrhea in which food passes quickly through the gut. It may also fit too little production of digestive juices by the pancreas (exocrine pancreatic insufficiency); there are then usually also more fat remnants and symptoms such as fatty stool and weight loss. People who do not eat meat or fish usually have no muscle fibers in their stool.

Muscle fibers (feces) too low

Few or no muscle fibers in the stool is the normal result. It means that protein from meat and fish has been broken down well, or that you have eaten little meat or fish. A low value has no further meaning.

Useful for

Because diet strongly determines the result, this test says little in people without symptoms, and even with symptoms it does not identify a cause. With symptoms that may fit poor digestion, such as long-lasting fatty or mushy stools, unintended weight loss or long-lasting diarrhea, testing through the GP is the right route. Pancreatic elastase in the stool and a blood test for celiac disease are then more targeted first tests. With blood in the stool, unintended weight loss or new bowel symptoms after the age of 50, this test is no substitute for a visit to the GP.

How common is it?

There are no Dutch figures on how often an abnormal result for these tests occurs. Bowel symptoms themselves are common: according to the guideline, irritable bowel syndrome affects about 4 in 100 adults. Conditions in which food is truly poorly digested, such as chronic inflammation of the pancreas, are much rarer.

Dutch medical specialists' guidelines (FMS) on irritable bowel syndrome (NHG and NVMDL) and chronic pancreatitis