Jk. Furne et Md. Levitt, FACTORS INFLUENCING FREQUENCY OF FLATUS EMISSION BY HEALTHY-SUBJECTS, Digestive diseases and sciences, 41(8), 1996, pp. 1631-1635
The purpose of the present study was to measure the frequency of flatu
s emission by 25 healthy subjects and to determine if factors commonly
thought to influence flatulence actually correlate with the frequency
of gas passage. Over a one-week period on their usual diet, subjects
passed gas 10 +/- 1 times/day [upper limit of normal (mean +/- 2 SD):
20 times/day]. The addition of the nonabsorbable disaccharide lactulos
e (10 g/day) to the diet significantly (P <0.01) increased flatus freq
uency to 19 +/- 2.4 times per day. Gender, age, and the ability of an
individual's colonic flora to produce methane had no significant influ
ence on flatus frequency either on the basal or lactulose-supplemented
diets. Some subjects consistently passed gas more often than did othe
rs, These individual differences appeared to result, in part, from dif
ferences in the ability of the flora to produce gas from a given quant
ity of fermentable material.