Endoscopic Ulcers Are Neither Meaningful Nor Validated as a Surrogate for Clinically Significant Upper Gastrointestinal Harm

 Conflicts of interest The author discloses the following: In the last 3 years Dr Graham has received small amounts of grant support and/or free drugs or urea breath tests from Meretek, and BioHit for investigator-initiated and completely investigator-controlled research. Dr Graham is a consultant for Novartis in relation to vaccine development for treatment or prevention of H pylori infection, and is a paid consultant for Otsuka Pharmaceuticals, manufacturer of the 13C-urea breath test. Dr Graham will receive royalties on materials related to the US version of the 13C-urea breath test until October 2009. Dr Graham is also an unpaid member of the executive committee of the PRECISION trial which is supported by Pfizer and is designed to compare the cardiovascular safety of celecoxib, naproxen, and ibuprofen in cardiovascular higher risk patients.

 Funding This material is based upon work supported in part by the Office of Research and Development, Medical Research Service, Department of Veterans Affairs. Dr Graham is supported in part by Public Health Service grant DK56338 which funds the Texas Medical Center Digestive Diseases Center and R01 CA116845. This content is solely the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily represent the official view of the VA or NIH.

PII: S1542-3565(09)00578-3

doi:10.1016/j.cgh.2009.06.006

© 2009 AGA Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.