Prevalence of functional dyspepsia-like symptoms in ulcerative colitis patients in clinical remission and overlap with irritable bowel syndrome-like symptoms

Objective: Quiescent ulcerative colitis (UC) patients often have irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)-like symptoms and we recently showed that the prevalence of IBS-like symptoms in UC patients in clinical remission was significantly higher as compared to healthy control subjects. However, the prevalence of functional dyspepsia (FD)-like symptoms in quiescent UC patients remains unknown. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of FD-like symptoms and the overlap with IBS-like symptoms in such patients. Materials and Methods: We reanalyzed the records of UC patients in remission using the subject cohort from our previous study. Clinical remission was defined as a clinical activity index (CAI) value <= 4 for at least 6 months. Diagnoses of FD- and IBS-like symptoms were evaluated by questionnaire according to the Rome III criteria. Results: One hundred seventy-two UC patients in clinical remission and 330 healthy control subjects were analyzed. Of the 172 patients, 9 (5.2%) met the criteria of FD, which was comparable with the controls (22/330, 6.7%). The prevalence rate of FD-like symptoms in UC patients with IBS-like symptoms (7/46, 15.2%) was lower as compared to that of the control subjects (6/16, 37.5%). On the other hand, a high percentage of the UC patients with FD-like symptoms also had IBS-like symptoms (7/9, 77.8%). Conclusions: Although the prevalence of FD-like symptoms in quiescent UC patients with IBS-like symptoms was low, UC patients with FD-like symptoms frequently had IBS-like symptoms.