Abstracts From Around the World

The link between gastric adenocarcinoma and Helicobacter pylori are strong. These two studies further demonstrate such a link. Takenaka et al, enrolled 1807 patients in a prospective one-year follow-up study after H. pylori eradication. At the end of one year, 6 of 1519 (0.0039%) patients eradicated of H. pylori, and 5 of 288 (0.0174 %) patients with persistent H. pylori infection, developed gastric cancer with 4 of the eradicated patients developing the intestinal type cancer. This incidence was statistically lower in the eradicated patients. Similarly, but with a longer follow-up, Hsu et al, followed 1225 patients with upper gastrointestinal complaints, of whom 50% had H. pylori infection. Patients underwent endoscopy at baseline and at 1- and 3-year intervals. During a mean follow-up of 6.3 years, gastric adenocarcinoma developed in 7 of the 618 H. pylori-infected patients (0.011%) but in none of the 607 uninfected patients. Likewise, the incidence of gastric lymphoma was 0.2% and 0%, respectively. Among H. pylori-infected subjects, the incidence of gastric malignancy was comparable between those receiving, and those not receiving, eradication therapy. Multivariate analysis showed that intestinal metaplasia was the only independent factor predicting subsequent development of gastric malignancy.