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Chronic
stomach pain usually worsened by meals
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – In most patients with
a condition known as functional dyspepsia, eating a
meal aggravates the symptoms, which include persistent
upper abdominal pain, fullness, bloating, nausea and
other symptoms, according to a new report published
in the journal “Gut.”
The condition is diagnosed after ruling out any apparent
underlying cause or disease, such as gastrointestinal
reflux disease or peptic ulcer.
A subset of patients with functional dyspepsia report
meal-related symptoms, senior author Dr. J. Tack, from
University Hospital Gasthuisberg in Leuven, Belgium,
and colleagues explain.
The goal of their study, which involved 218 patients,
was to assess the prevalence of meal-related symptoms
and to examine the relationship between meal ingestion
and specific symptoms. The symptoms studied included
abdominal pain, fullness, bloating, nausea, burning,
and belching.
The subjects completed symptom questionnaires and were
asked to rate the various symptoms while they were undergoing
a gastric emptying breath test, according to the report.
The intensity of all of the symptoms increased 15 minutes
after the meal and persisted for the full 4-hour study
period. The peak severity of fullness and bloating occurred
early, followed the peak severity of nausea and belching,
and lastly by pain and burning.
Overall, 79 percent of patients reported meal-aggravated
symptoms. In these patients, excessive fullness after
a meal was the strongest symptom, whereas in patients
without meal-aggravated symptoms, upper abdominal pain
was the most severe.
Gastric hypersensitivity was more common in patients
with meal-aggravated symptoms than in those without
them: 27.5 percent vs. 7.7 percent, the authors note.
The findings “convincingly demonstrate that symptoms
are meal-related in the vast majority of functional
dyspepsia patients,” Tack’s team concludes.
“The major distinction between patients with and
without self-reported meal-related symptoms is the type
of symptom that has the highest intensity.”
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