Study of gastric emptying in children with obesity or malnutrition

    WANG Baoª²Xi, WANG Maoª²Gui

    Department of Pediatrics Tangdu Hospital, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi¬ðan 710038, China

    ¡¾Abstract¡¿ AIM: To investigate the gastric dynamic in children with obesity or malnutrition. METHODS: Gastric emptying times were observed by type-B ultrasonography after ingestion of liquid meal . Motilin level of plasma on an empty stomach was investigated by radioimmunoassay. RESULTS: 120min after ingestion of liquid meal, the rate of residue in the stomach of children with obesity and malnutrition and health control group was respectively (7.4¡À4.0)%, (23.4¡À5.6)% and (14.2¡À10.5)%, (P<0.05). 100% gastric emptying times of obesity, malnutrition and the control group were respectively (147¡À28) min (176¡À18) min and (169¡À47) min. The emptying time of children with malnutrition was higher than that of children with obesity and the control group (P<0.05). 60 min after ingestion of liquid meal, the peristalsis frequency of gastric corpus in the three groups was (4.2¡À0.6) min, (4.6¡À0.6) min and (2.5¡À0.3) min respectively (P<0.01) and the contractive frequency of gastric atrium was respectively (2.7¡À0.4) min (3.8¡À0.6) min and (3.7¡À0.9) min. The motilin on an empty stomach of children with obesity was (443¡À83) ng¡¤L-1 and that of children with malnutrition was (219¡À66) ng¡¤L-1 . Motilin level on an empty stomach of obese children was higher than that of malnutrition children (P<0.05). CONCLUSION: The liquid gastric emptying in children with obesity is more rapid than that of children with malnutrition and the control group. The liquid gastric emptying of children with malnutrition is the slowest among the three groups. ......