Authors: Holtmann G, Goebell H, Talley NJ.

Institution: Division of Gastroenterology, University of Essen, Germany.

Objectives: Alterations of mechanosensitive thresholds occur in a subset of patients with functional dyspepsia and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). However, symptoms associated with these two conditions frequently overlap. It is not known how often subjects with and without symptom overlap have abnormal intestinal sensory thresholds. Our objective was to assess the pattern of symptoms and small intestinal sensory thresholds in patients with functional disorders.

Methods: We studied 157 consecutive patients who had undergone extensive diagnostic work-up to exclude organic disease. Abdominal symptoms were assessed with a validated instrument, and patients were categorized as having functional dyspepsia, IBS, or both. With a barostat device, we tested small intestinal mechanosensitive function in 22 randomly selected patients from this population (with functional dyspepsia, IBS, or both) and 22 healthy controls.

Conclusions: Small intestinal mechanosensitive pathways are disturbed in patients with functional dyspepsia and IBS. Differences in the pattern and localization of symptoms probably do not reflect differences in small intestinal sensory thresholds. Functional dyspepsia and IBS cannot be distinguished on the basis of altered small intestinal sensory thresholds.

Study link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9177509&dopt=Citation

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