Indigestion drug makes headway
By Nathan Seppa
Functional dyspepsia is the diagnosis that doctors often assign to people with chronic indigestion who don’t have a stomach ulcer or clear signs of acid-reflux disease. These people have a sense of fullness even though they haven’t eaten much, and they have bloating, nausea, and stomach pain that can resemble heartburn. The cause of functional dyspepsia is unclear, and standard medications offer little help.
Researchers report in the Feb. 23 New England Journal of Medicine that a drug called itopride relieves symptoms of functional dyspepsia significantly better than a placebo does.