Breakfast skipping and prevalence of heartburn syndrome among Iranian adults.

PURPOSE: Limited data are available linking breakfast consumption to Heart Burn Syndrome (HBS). This study was done to investigate to find whether breakfast consumption is associated with HBS. This cross-sectional study was done to investigate the association between breakfast consumption and HBS among Iranian adults.

METHODS

This cross-sectional study was performed among 4763 general adults of Isfahan, Iran. Participants' patterns of breakfast eating were assessed by asking two questions from them. How often do you eat breakfast in a week?" Participants were able to respond as: "never or 1 day/wk", "2-4 days/wk", "5-6 days/wk", "every day". HBS was defined as the presence of HBS at sometimes, often or always using a Persian version of validated self-administered modified ROME III questionnaire.

RESULTS

Totally, 4763 patients with HBS completed this cross-sectional study, where about 32.4% of them intake breakfast less than one time per week. After controlling for potential confounders, participants who consumed breakfast every day had a 43% lower risk for having HBS as compared with those who had breakfast ≤ 1 times/wk (OR 0.57; 95% CI 0.41-0.80). A significant inverse relationship was found between breakfast consumption and frequent than scare HBS (OR 0.57; 95% CI 0.40-0.77) among the whole population, not in patients with HBS. No significant association was observed between breakfast intake and severity of HBS (OR 0.56; 95% CI 0.31-1.04).

CONCLUSION

We found an inverse association between frequency of breakfast consumption and odds of HBS as well as the frequency of HBS among the adult population. Prospective studies are required to confirm these findings.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Level V, cross-sectional descriptive study.