Gastroesophageal reflux and metabolic syndrome.

UNLABELLED: The AIM of our study was to evaluate gastric, duodenal and gallbladder motility disorders in patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and metabolic syndrome.

MATERIAL AND

METHODS

We studied 128 patients with GERD divided into two groups: first group with metabolic syndrome and the second without metabolic syndrome. By abdominal ultrasound we monitored our patients for the gastric emptying rate, the duodenal motility and the nonlithiasic pathology of gallbladder (cholesterolosis).

RESULTS

We found that patients with metabolic syndrome had three kind of abnormal motility disorders including stomach, duodenum, and gallbladder. The patients without metabolic syndrome we found only two abnormal motility disorders: of the duodenum and gallbladder. Hyperglycemia and high serum cholesterol level in the first group were correlated with stomach, duodenum and gallbladder abnormal motilities. In our opinion metabolic syndrome can aggravate gastroesophageal reflux disease due to these metabolic abnormalities.

CONCLUSIONS

We consider that treatment of reflux disease in these particular cases must also involve measures to correct metabolic disorders.