An Unusual False-Positive Response to the Azuresin Test

A NUMBER OF YEARS have passed since Segal 1 and his group originally described the use of a cation exchange resin coupled with a quinine compound to determine the presence or absence of achlorhydria. Today the modified "tubeless test meal" using azuresin (Diagnex) has become an accepted method of detecting achlorhydria. Many reports in the literature 2-5 have testified to its value in screening tests done both as an office procedure or in the hospital, with various authors reporting a range of accuracy from 85 to 100%, when compared with the results of controlled gastric intubation. Rodman 6 found that the incidence of 3.5% of false positives (i.e., the tubeless gastric analysis indicated free hydrochloric acid when the gastric aspirate showed no free acid), in his series correlated well with other reports. No case in a review of the available literature has been found where the presence of intestinal diverticula