Association between Trauma and Functional Dyspepsia: A Scoping Review Protocol

Functional dyspepsia (FD) is one of the most prevalent disorders of gut-brain interaction (DGBI), with population-based studies estimating an impact of up to 30% of the global population (Ford et al. 2020; Lee et al. 2024). FD is characterized by chronic gastric symptoms such as postprandial fullness, early satiety, abdominal pain and discomfort, with the absence structural pathology from upper endoscopy. This is likely due to dysregulated gut-brain axis, with limited clinical treatment. Therefore, patients with FD often experience worsened quality of life and demonstrate higher healthcare utilization (Lacy et al. 2023). Evidence has shown that history of trauma, and presence of trauma-related symptoms, are associated with higher prevalence and severity of DGBI symptoms (Heymann et al. 2025). Specifically in FD, recent studies have also shown that trauma is a risk factor for its development and increased symptom severity (Silvernale et al. 2023; Zuzul et al. 2025), but this has not been systematically evaluated across the literature.Although there have been reviews and meta-analyses on other DGBIs and trauma, notably irritable bowel syndrome (Joshee et al. 2022; Zia et al. 2022; Junaid et al. 2024; Moyer et al. 2025; Sulaimi et al. 2025), to our knowledge no systematic assessment of the link between FD and trauma has been conducted. Overall, we aim to summarize the existing literature examining trauma constructs in samples of individuals with FD. We plan to conduct a scoping review given the limited number of studies specifically devoted to FD as opposed to heterogeneous DGBI samples.