The significance of life-events as contributing factors in childhood recurrent abdominal pain in an urban community in Malaysia

Abstract

This study aimed to look at the link between childhood recurrent abdominal pain (RAP) and the presence of recent life-events in an urban community in Malaysia. School children aged from 9 to 15 years in the city of Petaling Jaya were randomly selected to fill in a questionnaire and to be interviewed. The prevalence of RAP among 1488 school children studied was 9.6% (95% confidence interval (CI), 8.18-11.25). Higher prevalences of RAP were found in children who had experienced the following life-events in the previous year: loss of a family member through death (P<.001), hospitalisation of a family member (P<.001), the child's own hospitalisation (P=.001), change of address (P<.001), change in occupation of an immediate family member (P<.001), failure in a major school examination (P<.001), bullying at school (P=.001). Following logistic regression analysis, five life-events remain significant: hospitalisation of a family member (P=.038), the child's own hospitalisation (P=.034), change in occupation of an immediate family member (P=.049), examination failure (P=.001) and bullying at school (P=.028). This study strongly suggests that recent stressful life-events are important risk-factors for RAP.