The Relationship between Obstructive Sleep Apnea and Functional Dyspepsia

ABSTRACT

Objectives@#Functional dyspepsia is one of the most common functional gastrointestinal disorders. We aimed to investigate the relationship between obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and functional dyspepsia in patients with the complaint of sleep-disordered breathing. @*Methods@#We prospectively recruited patients who visited the institute for the evaluation of sleep-disordered breathing. All patients underwent overnight polysomnography and submitted their responses to sleep questionnaires. A validated Korean version of the Rome III criteria was used to estimate functional dyspepsia. Functional dyspepsia was classified into two subtypes of epigastric pain syndrome and postprandial distress syndrome. @*Results@#Out of 130 subjects with sleep disturbances, a total of 79 patients (60 men, 19 women) were enrolled. The mean (±standard deviation) age was 46.9±13.4 years. Functional dyspepsia was diagnosed in 8 (10%) patients. Patients with functional dyspepsia showed significantly higher values of Stanford Sleepiness Scale, the proportion of N1 sleep, arousal index, and apnea-hypopnea index compared to patients without functional dyspepsia (p=0.018, p=0.021, p=0.041, and p=0.039, respectively). With respect to OSA severity, 12% of patients with moderate OSA and 22% patients with severe OSA had functional dyspepsia. Severe OSA was significantly associated with a higher proportion of postprandial distress syndrome (p=0.030). @*Conclusions@#Our patients with snoring or OSA revealed that functional dyspepsia is associated with more severe daytime sleepiness and apnea-hypopnea index compared to those without functional dyspepsia. In addition, postprandial distress syndrome was a prevalent subtype of functional dyspepsia in patients with severe OSA.