Table 5.
Comparing Patients Grouped Based on Consulting Behavior for Functional Gastrointestinal Disorder Against Controls Concerning the Degree of Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis Suppression Post-dexamethasone Suppression Test
| HPA-axis suppression post-DST | P-valuesa (vs controls) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
||||
| Hypersuppressors (cortisol < 130 nmol L−1) | Intermediate (cortisol 130–500 nmol L−1) | Hyposuppressors (cortisol > 500 nmol L−1) | ||
| Controls (n = 146, n [%]) | 14 (10) | 118 (80) | 14 (10) | |
| Patients who were consulters for functional | 6 (24) | 15 (60) | 4 (16) | 0.039 |
| GI disorder (n = 25, n [%])b | ||||
| Patients who were non-consulters for functional | 7 (16) | 33 (73) | 5 (11) | 0.480 |
| GI disorder (n = 45, n [%])b | ||||
All analyses are comparisons concerning the categorized post-dexamethasone suppression test (DST) cortisol distributions between the patient consulters for functional gastrointestinal (GI) disorder and and the controls as well as between the patient non-consulters for functional GI disorder and the controls.
Out of the 73 patients the medical records of 70 cases were deemed of sufficient quality concerning screening for consulters for functional bowel disorder.
The control consisted of 146 subjects. The lowest 10% (n = 14) and the highest 10% cutoffs (n = 14) of the post-DST cortisol values (< 130 nmol L−1 and > 500 nmol L−1 respectively) within the control sample were defined as hyper- and hyposuppression respectively and the remaining 80% (n = 118) were defined as having an intermediate hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis suppression.
Significance testing performed with Fisher’s exact test.