Sucralfate versus placebo in treatment of non-ulcer dyspepsia

One hundred fifty-one patients with non-ulcer dyspepsia, defined as chronic epigastric pain without concomitant symptoms of the irritable bowel syndrome and with no evidence of any organic disease other than macroscopic or microscopic gastritis/duodenitis seen at endoscopy on entry into the trial, were randomly assigned to treatment for four weeks with sucralfate or a placebo, 1 g three times a day one-half hour before meals, according to a double-blind model. Seventy-nine patients received sucralfate and 72 patients received a placebo. According to patients' subjective assessment of their symptoms at four weeks, 61 patients (77 percent) in the sucralfate group and 40 patients (56 percent) in the placebo group had become symptom-free or showed improvement, whereas the condition of 18 (23 percent) in the former group compared with 32 (44 percent) in the latter group remained unchanged or deteriorated. The difference between the groups was significant (p less than 0.01). The best response to sucralfate treatment (84 percent or more symptom-free or improved) was achieved in patients with mild or moderate symptoms and without macroscopic or microscopic inflammation of their gastric mucosa--a typical patient with non-ulcer dyspepsia. Our results indicate that sucralfate is significantly more effective than placebo in the treatment of non-ulcer dyspepsia.