Current concepts in clinical therapeutics: peptic ulcer disease

The epidemiology, pathophysiology, diagnosis, clinical presentation, and treatment of peptic ulcer disease (PUD) are reviewed. PUD occurs commonly, with about 4 million Americans affected in a year. Cigarette smoking, aspirin use, and prolonged corticosteroid use are associated with PUD. The disease's etiology is multifactorial; the long-held assumption that ulcers develop solely because of increased gastric acid secretion is no longer valid. Although duodenal ulcer patients are frequently hypersecretors of acid, gastric ulcer patients more commonly have defective mechanisms for protecting the mucosal lining from acid, pepsin, and other agents. PUD is best diagnosed using an upper gastrointestinal roentgenographic series or using endoscopy. The clinical presentations, which involve epigastric abdominal pain that is relieved by food, milk, or antacids, may aid in diagnosis but are not usually definitive. Treatment is designed to relieve symptoms, heal the ulcer, prevent recurrences, and prevent complications. Of the four currently available drug treatments (cimetidine, ranitidine, antacids, and sucralfate), the treatment of first choice is cimetidine or ranitidine for four or six weeks, respectively, for duodenal and gastric ulcer patients. Antacids should be used as needed for pain, and the patient should be reassessed at the end of this period. For most patients, neither cimetidine nor ranitidine is demonstrably superior to one another. Several agents are under investigation in the U.S., including other H2-receptor antagonists (famotidine and nizatidine), proton-pump inhibitors (omeprazole), prostaglandins (misoprostol, arbasprostil, enprostil, and trimoprostil), antimuscarinic agents (pirenzepine), and tricyclic antidepressants (doxepin and trimipramine). peptic ulcer disease is an important disease. It is best treated with H2-receptor antagonists supplemented with antacids as needed for pain.