Clinical Implications of Low-grade Duodenal Eosinophilia in Functional Dyspepsia

Abstract

Background:Functional dyspepsia (FD) is a multifactorial disorder with no targeted therapy. Duodenal eosinophilia and low-grade inflammation are potential pathogenic mechanisms. However, the impact of duodenal eosinophils (D-EO) histologic evaluation in real-life clinical practice was not explored.Aim:To evaluate the clinical utility of D-EO and low-grade inflammation in FD in real-life practice.Materials and Methods:A multicenter prospective study was conducted. A total of 636 patients who meet Rome-III criteria were selected before upper endoscopy and 516 patients were included after normal endoscopy were assessed. Clinical parameters,Helicobacter pylori(H. pylori),and duodenal histology were evaluated.Results:FD subtypes were 231 (45%) patients who had epigastric pain syndrome (EPS), 168 (33%) postprandial distress syndrome (PDS), and 117 (22%) EPS/PDS overlap. Two hundred fifty-nine (50.3%) patients wereH. pylori+. Histologic duodenal grading of chronic inflammation and intraepithelial lymphocytes showed no difference between FD subtypes. Increased in D-EO densities (>10 per high power field) was significant in PDS compared with EPS and EPS/PDS overlap subtypes. The odds ratio of PDS in subjects with duodenal eosinophilia densities was 2.28 (95% CI, 1.66-3.14;P<0.0001), adjusting for age, gender,H. pyloriand nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug the odds ratio was 3.6 (95% CI, 2.45-5.28;P<0.0001). receiver operating characteristic curve analysis further demonstrated that low-grade duodenal eosinophilia, in particularH. pylori−, was highly accurate for PDS with the area under the curve 0.731 compared withH. pylori+area under the curve 0.598. Furthermore, low-grade duodenal eosinophilia was significantly correlated with treatment response under 4 to 6 weeks of proton pump inhibitor therapy.Conclusion:Our findings suggest that low-grade duodenal eosinophilia is associated with PDS subtype non-H. pyloriFD patients and could be a useful marker of treatment response.