Relationship between Functional Dyspepsia and Gastric Eosinophilia: A Single Centre Cross-Sectional Study.

Abstract

Functional dyspepsia is one of the most common gastrointestinal disorders. Immune activation by eosinophils is thought to be one of the important mechanisms behind the pathogenesis of functional dyspepsia. The study aimed to evaluate the association of gastric eosinophilia with functional dyspepsia. This cross-sectional study was conducted in the Department of Gastroenterology, Sir Salimullah Medical College Mitford Hospital, Dhaka, Bangladesh from July 2019 to June 2020. Forty-six (46) adult patients with functional dyspepsia diagnosed by Rome-III criteria were enrolled. Forty patients not fulfilling the criteria of functional dyspepsia and also patients attending the department for endoscopy (evaluation of anemia, pre-ERCP screening, evaluation of chronic diarrhea, etc.) and having normal endoscopic features subsequently were taken as comparison group. After endoscopy, a biopsy was taken from the gastric body and antrum of each participant. Counting of eosinophil and histopathology was done by an expert senior histopathologist. It was expressed in per HPF. Statistical analysis was done by SPSS 22.0 and p<0.05 was set as statistically significant. Mean±SD age was 40.34±16.22 and 40.15±13.96 in functional dyspepsia patients and patients taken for comparison respectively. Females were slightly predominant with a female-male ratio of 1.2:1. Lower middle-class families were found to be the most vulnerable group suffering from functional dyspepsia. The mean eosinophil count of gastric body and antrum in functional dyspepsia patients was higher than that of the comparison group. The difference between the two groups was statistically significant (p<0.001). A statistically significant relation was found between gastric eosinophilia (p=0.015, 0.016) with functional dyspepsia (p<0.001). Eosinophil count of gastric mucosa was significantly higher in functional dyspepsia patients and had an association with it. However, further study with a large sample size could explain this precisely.