Stomach cancer: the Helicobacter pylori screening recommended for people at risk

To encourage screening for Helicobacter pylori, the French study of Helicobacter (GEFH) group has launched a public information and health professionals about the dangers of this bacterium responsible for ulcers and to term of 60 to 90% of gastric cancers.
An amazing bacteria
Helicobacter pylori is amazing more than a title. First, it develops niche in the wall of the stomach, in an acidic medium where you could not imagine that bacteria can survive until its discovery in 1982 by two Australian scientists, Robin Warren John and Barry Marshall.

Another feature of infection is usually acquired during childhood, between 4 and 12 years, and persists throughout life as there is no eradication by antibiotic treatment. With over 50% of the world population infected, it is the most common chronic bacterial infection. In France, 20-50% of adults harbor the bacteria, multiplying, causes chronic inflammation of the stomach.

It is especially in the 1990s Helicobacter pylori was talking to her when Warren and Marshall showed that peptic ulcers and chronic gastritis were associated with this type of infection and gastric pathology that could then cured by antibiotics. A surprising discovery that earned its authors the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2005.

"Since then, many advances have been recalls Anne Courillon Mallet, member of the Scientific Committee GEFH. A link with stomach cancer has been increasingly established and officially recognized in 2006 with the release of new European recommendations."

A permanent cure
H. pylori is not only responsible for 90% of duodenal ulcers and 70% of gastric ulcers, which develop "in the first 30 years of infection," but the infection can also be, "from 60" at the origin of gastric cancer. It has been established that the bacterium is responsible for 60-90% of cancers of the stomach.

Without recommending screening and eradication generalized to the entire population, because "the cost and risk of promoting antibiotic resistance," the GEFH offers, "because the bacterium is transmitted within the family" , to search for people related to a patient with gastric cancer. Screening is also recommended for people "with significant gastric symptoms" and available "to any person who simply demand," says Dr. Courillon Mallet.

The research of the bacteria can be done during a gastroscopy with removal of the lining of the stomach, or a so-called non-invasive method, which is a breath test labeled urea which highlights the presence of the bacterium by detecting the conversion of a reactant at one of its enzymes.

Eradication is then considered with antibiotic treatment 7 to 14 days resulted in an elimination of the bacteria in 90% of cases. Once cured, "the patient does not reinfect themselves" and so away one of the most important of stomach cancer, which remains the second deadliest cancer in the world risk factors.