Introduction:

University students often eat at street food stalls, which can cause various digestive symptoms, although this has not been evidenced in studies carried out in this population.

Objective:

To establish whether food consumption in street food stalls is associated with symptoms of dyspepsia in Peruvian medical students.

Materials and methods:

A secondary data analysis of a multicenter study was conducted. Of 1 797 medical students surveyed in eight medical schools, a statistical power of 93% was calculated. Symptoms of dyspepsia were associated with a history of food consumption in street food stalls. Association statistics were obtained with bivariate and multivariate models.

Results:

The prevalence of functional dyspepsia varied between 9-28% and food consumption in street stalls between 1-5%. In the multivariate analysis, eating food in the street was a factor associated with a greater frequency of suffering from functional dyspepsia (aPR: 1.45; 95%CI: 1.09-1.94; p=0.010). In addition, other significant variables were the female sex (aPR: 1.40; 95%CI: 1.15-1.71 p=0.001) and people eating at similar times (aPR: 0.76; 95%CI: 0.61-0.94; p=0.012) adjusted for age, and academic term.

Conclusions:

Dyspepsia symptoms were more common in students who ate their food from street stalls. This should be monitored by health and university authorities, as it can have short- and long-term consequences.

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