Short meal-to-bedtime linked to GERD in pregnancy
Short meal-to-bedtime may be a predominant risk factor of gastroesophageal reflux disease in pregnant women, according to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology.
“This dieting habit was also significantly associated with reflux symptom frequency and reflux-related insomnia in pregnancy,” Duc T. Quach, MD, PhD, and colleagues wrote. “This could be an important target for a nonpharmaceutical approach to manage GERD in pregnancy in future studies.”
Quach and colleagues conducted a cross-sectional study of 400 pregnant women who visited the antenatal clinic Gia-Dinh People’s Hospital in Vietnam.
“GERD was defined as having troublesome heartburn and/or regurgitation at least once a week,” Quach and colleagues wrote. “Reflux-related insomnia was defined as having difficulties in initiating or maintaining sleep through the night. [Meal-to-bedtime (MTBT)] was defined as “short” if it was [2 hours or less] in more than two-thirds of days in a week.”
Among the study cohort, 154 patients had GERD and 20 patients had reflux-related insomnia.
Results from a multivariate analysis showed that factors significantly correlated with GERD included being in the third trimester (OR = 1.66; 95% CI, 1.03-2.69), having a previous history of typical reflux symptoms (OR = 9.05; 95% CI; 5.29-15.5), and short MTBT (OR = 12.73; 95% CI, 2.92-55.45).
Further, nighttime MTBT was also a significant risk factor for reflux-related insomnia (OR = 4.6; 95% CI, 1.64-12.92).
“The frequency of reflux symptoms progressively increased across subgroups of patients with no short MTBT, either daytime or nighttime short MTBT, and with both daytime and nighttime short MTBT,” the researchers wrote.
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