Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Sep 28, 2017; 23(36): 6694-6704
Published online Sep 28, 2017. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v23.i36.6694
Gastrointestinal symptom prevalence depends on disease duration and gastrointestinal region in type 2 diabetes mellitus
Midori Fujishiro, Akifumi Kushiyama, Hiroki Yamazaki, Sunao Kaneko, Yuko Koketsu, Takeshi Yamamotoya, Takako Kikuchi, Hideyuki Sakoda, Ryo Suzuki, Takashi Kadowaki
Midori Fujishiro, Hiroki Yamazaki, Sunao Kaneko, Ryo Suzuki, Takashi Kadowaki, Department of Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases, Graduate School of Medicine, the University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8655, Japan
Akifumi Kushiyama, Takako Kikuchi, Division of Diabetes and Metabolism, Institute for Adult Diseases, Asahi Life Foundation, Tokyo 103-0002, Japan
Yuko Koketsu, Department of Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases, Shinko Hospital, Kobe 651-0072, Japan
Takeshi Yamamotoya, Department of Medical Science, Graduate School of Medicine, University of Hiroshima, Hiroshima 734-8553, Japan
Hideyuki Sakoda, Division of Neurology, Respirology, Endocrinology and Metabolism, Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Miyazaki, 5200 Kiyotakecho Kihara, Miyazaki 889-1692, Japan
Author contributions: Fujishiro M and Kushiyama A contributed equally to this work; Fujishiro M designed the study, collected and analyzed the data, and drafted the manuscript; Kushiyama A provided analytical oversight and revised the manuscript for important intellectual content; Yamazaki H, Kaneko S, Koketsu Y and Yamamotoya T collected and analyzed the data; Kikuchi T analyzed the data; Sakoda H designed the study and collected the data; Suzuki R and Kadowaki T supervised the study; all authors have read and approved the final version to be published.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the University of Tokyo Hospital Institutional Review Board.
Informed consent statement: All study participants provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Midori Fujishiro, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases, Graduate School of Medicine, the University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8655, Japan. midori-tky@umin.ac.jp
Telephone: +81-3-3815-5411 Fax: +81-3-5802-5679
Received: December 14, 2016
Peer-review started: December 15, 2016
First decision: February 23, 2017
Revised: March 12, 2017
Accepted: June 1, 2017
Article in press: June 1, 2017
Published online: September 28, 2017
Core Tip

Core tip: We describe the results of a questionnaire survey of 134 type 2 diabetes mellitus outpatients experiencing gastrointestinal symptoms. The novel finding is that symptom frequencies differed among disease durations and according to affected gastrointestinal regions. Lower abdominal symptoms not only manifested during the late but also in the early stage of diabetes when there were no organ complications related to this disease. Our study highlights the importance of not underestimating gastrointestinal symptoms and of questioning patients about quality of life impairment due to abdominal symptoms, especially in both the early period and after a diabetes duration of 10 or even 15 years.