Risk factors of relapse in gastric ulcer: a one-year, double-blind, comparative study of nizatidine versus placebo.

A controlled, double-blind study with nizatidine in gastric ulcer maintenance treatment was recently performed. Univariate analysis of results after 12 months showed that: a) younger patients have a poor outcome (among nizatidine-treated); b) smoking is a risk factor for relapse; c) ulcers of the lesser curvature of the corpus relapsed more frequently than the others. The present work is a more in-depth analysis of the results using the stepwise logistic regression. The study, which involved 241 patients, takes into account the following data: age, sex, family history of ulcer, smoking habits, alcohol consumption, previous ulcer treatment, number of ulcers, ulcer size and location and current drug therapy (nizatidine or placebo). Multivariate analysis showed that treatment (Odds Ratio 2.45), smoking habits (OR 2.35), sex (OR 2.30) and ulcer family history (OR 2.7) are the major risk factors for relapse. Odds Ratios of combined gastric ulcer relapse risk factors were also obtained. It was concluded that nizatidine treatment is significantly better than placebo in maintaining gastric ulcer remission; cigarette smoking was confirmed the most important risk factor for gastric ulcer relapse; male sex and positive ulcer family history also have a negative influence on gastric ulcer outcome.