Physical-based therapy for the treatment of functional dyspepsia: a systematic review.

Functional dyspepsia is a relatively common gastrointestinal disorder characterized by upper abdominal discomfort, bloating, early satiety, and nausea in the absence of any identifiable organic cause. As there is no known causal cure, this disease significantly affects the quality of life of patients. It has been reported that functional dyspepsia could be related to lower exercise levels. As exercise and manual manipulation could result in a lower cost of health care than medications do, it is important to establish whether these types of therapy have a real impact on the alleviation of symptoms. Therefore, we aimed to perform a systematic review with the aim of evaluating the effects of physical treatment options for functional dyspepsia. The study protocol was registered on PROSPERO (CRD42024533101). A total of 12,217 studies were identified across three databases: Embase, PubMed, and CENTRAL. After removing duplicates, abstract screening, assessment for full-text eligibility and further exclusion, five studies were considered for data analysis. The total number of participants in these studies who fulfilled the eligibility criteria and were analysed was 266. Among these patients, 134 received intervention, whereas 132 were in the control group. The analysed studies revealed that this type of intervention could lead to improvements in symptom severity and quality of life in patients with functional dyspepsia compared with controls. These benefits were especially present when exercise was combined with relaxation or biofeedback techniques. However, heterogeneity in interventions and outcome measures limits the strength of conclusions, although no hight risk of bias was identified.