Factors influencing frequency.pdfVIP

Digestive Diseases and Sciences, Vol. 41, No. 8 (August 1996), pp. 1631-1635 Factors Influencing Frequency of Flatus Emission by Healthy Subjects J.K. FURNE, BS and M.D. LEVITT, MD The purpose of the present study was to measure the frequency of flatus emission by 25 healthy subjects and to determine if factors commonly thought to influence flatulence actually correlate with the frequency of gas passage. Over a one-week period on their usual diet, subjects passed gas 10 _ 1 times/day [upper limit of normal (mean + 2 so): 20 times/day]. The addition of the nonabsorbable disaccharide lactulose (10 g/day) to the diet significantly (P 0.01) increased flatus frequency to 19 _ 2.4 times per day. Gender, age, and the ability of an individuals colonic flora to produce methane had no significant influence on flatus frequency either on the basal or lactulose-supplemented diets. Some subjects consistently passed gas more often than did others. These individual differences appeared to result, in part, from differences in the ability of the flora to produce gas from a given quantity of fermentable material. KEY WORDS: flatulence; hydrogen gas; methane; lactulose. While a sizable fraction of the population believes that they suffer from a problem with intestinal gas, data on what constitutes normal with regard to the passage of rectal gas are very scarce. For example, there has been much anecdotal speculation concern- ing such mundane questions as whether some subjects consistently pass more gas than others and whether age and gender influence flatus excretion, but these topics have not been scientifically studied. This lack of normative data limits the ability of the physician to respond rationally to patients who believe that they have a flatulence problem. We recently carried out an extensive study of a variety of gaseous symptoms in healthy controls. The purpose of this paper is to present information on the Manuscript received December 8, 1995