Relationship between dyspepsia symptom score and endoscopic findings and histopathological findings and helicobacter pylori in patients with functional dyspepsia-epigastric pain syndrome

Functional dyspepsia (FD) is a clinical syndrome characterized by distinct symptom complexes. Different patho-physiological mechanisms are responsible for development of it. FD patients are categorized into two categories, epigastric pain syndrome and postprandial discomfort syndrome according to Rome III criteria. In this study, we aimed to investigate the relationship between dyspepsia symptom score and endoscopic findings and histopathological findings and Helicobacter pylori (Hp) in patients with epigastric pain syndrome.Sixty patients were involved in the study, they were diagnosed as epigastric pain syndrome according to Rome III criteria, 38 (63.3 %) of them were female and 22 (36.7 %) were male, mean age was 39 ± 13. Patients underwent upper gastrointestinal tract endoscopy after counting the eight parameters of Glasgow dyspepsia severity score which gained by answers of the patients. Patients categorized into normal, antral gastritis and pangastritis groups according to endoscopic findings and two biopsier were obtained from the antrum. Histological examination of the biopsy specimens were evaluated according to the modified Sydney system.In our study, we found that the severity of Hp positivity was positively corelated with the severity of the inflamation and activation and this was statistically significant (consecutively p: 0.014, p: 0.001). There was not a correlation between Hp intensity and dyspepsia score. We observed a negative relation between inflammation degree caused by Hp and dyspepsia score, but it was statistically insignificant. We also observed that when Hp intensity increased, mast cell count was also increased, and this finding was statistically significant (p: 0.032). There was a statistically significant correlation between inflammation and activation and mast cell count (p: 0.000). We observed a negative correlation between dyspepsia score and mast cell count, but it was not statistically significant. There was a relation between eosinophil count and Hp intensity. Eosinophil count was increased when Hp intensity increased, this finding was statistically significant (p: 0.044). There was a statistically significant relation between inflammation and activation severity (consecutively p: 0.002, p: 0.016). We did not find a relation between NF-?B expression and Hp intensity, intestinal metaplasia, inflammation, activation, and atrophy.Symptom score and inflammatory process of Hp infection may be compared with more cases in epigastric pain syndrome and postprandial discomfort syndrome patients which compose subgroups of FD.Key words: Functional dyspepsia, Helicobacter pylori, mast cell, eosinophil, NF-?B, dyspepsia score.