Twenty‐four‐hour intragastric acidity and plasma gastrin concentration before and during treatment with either ranitidine or omeprazole

Simultaneous 24‐hour intragastric acidity and plasma gastrin concentrations were measured in 12 duodenal ulcer patients before and on the twenty‐eighth day of treatment with either ranitidine 150 mg b.d. or omeprazole 20 mg o.m. Median integrated 24‐hour intragastric acidity was decreased significantly from 1148 to 490 and 36 mmol. hour litre−1 during treatment with ranitidine and omeprazole, respectively, whilst median intragastric 24‐hour plasma gastrin was raised significantly from 328 to 799 and 1519 pmol. hour litre−1 respectively. When the results of all 48 experiments were considered together, there was a significant inverse correlation between the 24‐hour integrated values for intragastric acidity and plasma gastrin concentration. Both drugs caused a significant elevation of plasma gastrin throughout the 24 hours, although ranitidine had no effect on intragastric acidity from 1900 to 2200 hours. When compared with similar profiles of acidity and gastrin in pernicious‐anaemia patients, the modest elevations of plasma gastrin observed in this study suggest that neither drug will be associated with clinically relevant enterochromaffin‐like cell proliferation in duodenal ulcer patients.