Dyspepsia in adolescence

The Rome II criteria for functional gastrointestinal disorders, and adopted by the pediatric working group, defines dyspepsia as “a feeling of persistent or recurrent pain or discomfort in the upper abdomen,” most often aggravated by meal ingestion.¹ When no physical or organic cause for the symptom is identified with conventional testing, the condition is termed “functional dyspepsia” (FD). The precise prevalence of FD in children is not known. In a recent community-based study, the prevalence of FD in Italian children aged birth to 12 years was 13%.² This may be an under-representation, because FD is diagnosed less often in preadolescents because of their inability to clearly express the characteristic symptoms. An earlier community-based study of adolescents in the United States reported the prevalence of FD to be 20%.³