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By Lindsay Braun, Ivanhoe Men’s health Correspondent

ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — Acid reflux may be to blame for common ailments like chronic cough or even chest pain. Two new studies reveal many people who suffer from acid reflux have never felt the telltale burn.

Researchers at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston collected data from patients who were brought to an emergency room complaining of chest pain. After measuring pH levels in the esophagus, they found 57 percent of the patients studied had acid levels that could be classified as GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease).

“These chest pain symptoms and hoarseness or asthma account for about a third of the patients we see. They come in with no typical symptoms,” lead investigator Julie Liu, M.D., assistant professor of gastroenterology at the University of Alberta, told Ivanhoe.

Women were more likely than men to be rushed to an emergency room with non-heart related chest pain. This may be because men typically suffer only from upright reflux, while women tend to suffer from reflux while they are upright as well as when they’re lying down.

Reflux can also masquerade as chronic cough. Sometimes this is caused by non-acid reflux, which can be harder to diagnose because it is undetectable using a standard pH test. “You may have significant decreased quality of life, extreme hoarseness of voice from coughing all day. There are some serious side effects,” Dr. Liu said.

In a second study, researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston studied patients with persistent cough who were taking acid-suppression therapy to evaluate a new type of reflux testing device called MII-Ph. The MII-Ph device is capable of detecting non-acidic reflux and researchers report it proved useful and cost-effective for determining whether or not a patient is a good candidate for anti-reflux surgery.

“Its not uncommon for patients to manifest their reflux disease in the atypical form. We’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg,” said Dr. Liu. “General practitioners really need to start looking into this.”

This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, which offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, click on: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.

SOURCE: Ivanhoe interview with Julie Liu, M.D., 72nd American College of Gastroenterology Annual Scientific Meeting in Philadelphia, Oct. 12-17, 2007

This entry was posted on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Aid / Disasters, Diabetes, Medical News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.