AN EPIDEMIOLOGICAL STUDY ON RISK FACTORS TO PEPTIC ULCER

Abstract

To investigate the relation between the consumption of cigarette or dietary factors (alcohol, spice, coffee, black tea and milk) and the onset or relapse of peptic ulcer, we performed a questionnaire to all the patients who were introduced to upper gastrointestinal endoscopy during June, July and August, 1982. The quenstionnaire was filled out in the waiting room right before the examination. This questionnaire has a feature that a patient must write down the consumption of cigarette or dietary factors both before and after occurrence of symptoms. We obtained the sufficient answers from 590 patients including 172 gastric ulcer, 48 gastroduodenal ulcer, 98 duodenal ulcer, 119 normal or atrophic gastritis and 153 miscellaneous diseases.
Concerning the consumption of these factors before occurrence of symptoms, we compared male patients with gastric ulcer (136 cases), those with gastroduodenal ulcer (38 cases) and those with duodenal ulcer (84 cases), with 65 controls diagnosed endoscopically as normal or atrophic gastritis. As a result of it, by all the epidemiological analyses used, that is, a simple comparion of all ulcer cases with controls, a comparison in the combination of two of the factors and the standardized relative risk, cigarette proved to be a significant risk factor to all sorts of peptic ulcer. Spice and coffee may be risk factors to gastric and duodenal ulcer respectively. On the other hand, neither alcohol, black tea nor milk showed any significant difference in consumption between patients with peptic ulcer and the controls.