Daily Medical Update

Non-ulcer dyspepsia

Monday, August 31, 2026

🔬 Practice-Changing Findings
Evidence from RCTs and meta-analyses published in the last 12 months.

1. A Clinical Practice Update for the Management of Patients With Disorders of Gut-Brain Interaction and Altered Food Intake Behavior.

Neurogastroenterology and motility (2026) - Consensus Statement

Key Findings

  • The expert panel reached consensus on recognizing DGBI-induced altered food intake behavior when Rome-criteria gastrointestinal symptoms are worsened by eating, lead to reduced intake, and cause significant unintended weight loss.
  • The panel identified organic disease and eating disorders as key differentials, endorsed multidisciplinary management, and reserved enteral or parenteral feeding for life-threatening nutritional deficiency that did not improve after oral approaches failed.

📋 Practice Implication: In dyspepsia with restrictive eating or weight loss, assess nutritional risk and competing diagnoses early and coordinate gastroenterology, nutrition, and behavioral-health care.

2. Italian guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of functional dyspepsia - joint consensus from the Italian societies of gastroenterology and endoscopy (SIGE), Neurogastroenterology and motility (SINGEM), hospital gastroenterologists and endoscopists (AIGO), digestive endoscopy (SIED) and general medicine (SIMG).

Digestive and liver disease : official journal of the Italian Society of Gastroenterology and the Italian Association for the Study of the Liver (2025) - Practice Guideline

Key Findings

  • The panel reached at least 80% agreement on defining epigastric pain syndrome and post-prandial distress syndrome, recommending H. pylori screening with eradication when positive, and advising routine blood tests to exclude systemic disease.
  • The panel supported standard-dose PPIs as a short first-line course and concluded that higher PPI doses did not improve response; it discouraged exclusion diets and prokinetics as first-line therapy and recommended tricyclic antidepressants for epigastric pain syndrome and cognitive-behavioral therapy after medical-treatment failure.

📋 Practice Implication: Use the guideline to structure initial evaluation and treatment, reserving endoscopy for age 45 or older, alarm features, or refractory symptoms and matching later therapy to the symptom phenotype.

3. Potassium-competitive Acid Blockers in Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease and Functional Dyspepsia: A Korean Expert Review With Original Meta-analyses.

Journal of neurogastroenterology and motility (2026) - Review

Key Findings

  • Across the reviewed evidence, P-CABs provided rapid, sustained acid suppression and improved healing or maintenance-remission rates compared with PPIs in erosive reflux disease, particularly severe disease.
  • For functional dyspepsia, tegoprazan was reported to improve symptoms without delaying gastric emptying; the review noted limited clinical and real-world data and called for surveillance of long-term hypergastrinemia and mucosal changes.

📋 Practice Implication: Consider a P-CAB selectively when acid-mediated symptoms remain problematic, while recognizing that functional-dyspepsia evidence is less mature than the reflux evidence and requires long-term safety vigilance.

4. Efficacy of exercise therapies on functional dyspepsia: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Digestive and liver disease : official journal of the Italian Society of Gastroenterology and the Italian Association for the Study of the Liver (2025) - Meta-Analysis

Key Findings

  • Across 15 randomized trials involving 1,359 patients, exercise therapy improved functional-dyspepsia symptoms, including epigastric fullness and pain.
  • Exercise also improved quality of life and sleep and reduced depression, with no serious adverse events reported in the included trials.

📋 Practice Implication: Offer structured exercise as a low-risk adjunct for patients seeking nonpharmacologic symptom management, especially when sleep or mood symptoms coexist.

5. Tailored Treatment of Functional Dyspepsia With Nortriptyline: A Multicenter, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial.

Clinical gastroenterology and hepatology : the official clinical practice journal of the American Gastroenterological Association (2026) - Randomized Controlled Trial

Key Findings

  • In 69 genotype-preselected participants, nortriptyline did not improve the primary response rate compared with placebo at 12 weeks: 45% versus 58% (P = .276).
  • Adverse-event rates did not differ significantly, while nortriptyline plasma levels were higher in responders and treatment belief was associated with improved response (77% vs 36%).

📋 Practice Implication: Do not assume CYP2D6-guided nortriptyline improves dyspepsia outcomes; if a TCA is used, discuss uncertain efficacy and monitor response rather than relying on genotype selection alone.

💡 Summary

The validated candidates support five high-significance findings spanning multidisciplinary assessment, diagnostic standardization, exercise, genotype-guided nortriptyline, and acid suppression. The strongest treatment signals are for exercise, while the nortriptyline trial was negative versus placebo and the P-CAB evidence remains review-level with limited functional-dyspepsia data.

Generated from 57 PubMed abstracts · RCTs and Meta-analyses only

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