Prevalence, Symptoms and Lifestyle Aspect of Peptic Ulcer Disease among Undergraduate Students of a Nigerian University

Abstract

Peptic ulcer disease (PUD) may result to frequent illness, absenteeism in classes and consequent poor academic performance but 
its distribution and management among university students has been poorly studied. This study assessed the prevalence and 
symptoms of PUD as well as lifestyle and nutritional status of students with PUD. A total of 297 students (48% females and 52% 
males) were selected using multistage random sampling method. Information on knowledge, lifestyle and dietary habit was 
obtained via structured questionnaire. The study revealed 7.9% confirmed PUD cases. Students complained of symptoms 
suggestive of PUD such as bloating (23.7%), nausea (33.8%), burping (32.4%), bloody stool (15.8%) and heart burn (46.4%). 
About 68.2% of students with PUD had good knowledge of PUD while 44.1% practice healthy lifestyle. About 36.4%, 59.1% 
and 4.5% of the confirmed cases were underweight, normal and overweight, respectively. There was no significant relationship 
between knowledge of healthy lifestyle in PUD and nutritional status. Factors that affected the use of good practice in PUD 
included early morning lectures (81.8%), food vendors opening late (54.5%) and poor meal variety (50%). In conclusion, low 
prevalence rate of PUD but high occurrence of symptoms related to PUD was found among the students. An appreciable number 
of students with PUD were underweight and knowledge of healthy lifestyle did not influence nutritional status. Early morning 
lectures was the greatest challenge faced by undergraduate students living with PUD. Measures should be taken to detect students 
with PUD and tackle nutritional challenges faced by these students.