An attack on stomach bacteria cuts the risk of one of the deadliest cancers
Eradication of the microbe that causes gastric ulcers has a potentially life-saving side effect.
Ridding the gut of the ulcer-causing bacterium Helicobacter pylori could prevent stomach cancer in people with a family history of the disease.
H. pylori infects more than half of all people, and has been linked to peptic ulcers and gastric cancer, which kills more people worldwide than all but two other cancers. Il Ju Choi at the National Cancer Center in Goyang, South Korea, and his colleagues studied 1,676 people with H. pylori infection who had a close relative with stomach cancer. Half of the participants received a placebo. The other half received a cocktail of antibiotics, which eradicated H. pylori in most but not all of the participants who took the drugs
About 9 years later, 1.2% of participants who had been treated with the cocktail had developed stomach cancer, compared with 2.7% of those who had received the placebo. Stomach cancer occurred in only 0.8% of those whose H. pylori population had been eradicated, compared with 2.9% of those who remained infected.
My gastroenterologist since 2007, Dr Thomas Borody, created the triple antibiotic therapy for Drs Barry Marshall and Robin Warren who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2005. They discovered the link between H.pylori bacteria and stomach ulcers. Prof. Borody correctly diagnosed my culprit as the mycobacterium C.pneumoniae and I had a massive improvement after 8 weeks of 3 targeted antibiotics. You’ve reminded me that back then he mentioned a possible correlation between this infection and my previous breast cancer. I got the impression that it was an informal observation after many years in practice. He’d already done 80,000 endoscopies before mine... PS I added more information but lost the original link so have redone it as a new post.
Well I did not have low acid but stomach ulcers were found and then non hodgkins lymphoma unusually in the stomach .No h.pylori found but I read somewhere that it can change into something else. I suspect I had it after being extremely ill with stomach problems during and after a holiday in India some 12 years ago.
Of note in this story is that when Dr Barry Marshall discovered the link, the medical profession derided him. From Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry...
In 1979, Marshall was appointed as a Registrar in Medicine at the Royal Perth Hospital. He met Robin Warren, a pathologist interested in gastritis, during internal medicine fellowship training at Royal Perth Hospital in 1981. Together, the pair studied the presence of spiral bacteria in association with gastritis. In 1982, they performed the initial culture of H. pylori and developed their hypothesis related to the bacterial cause of peptic ulcer and gastric cancer.[7] It has been claimed that the H. pylori theory was ridiculed by established scientists and doctors, who did not believe that any bacteria could live in the acidic environment of the stomach. Marshall was quoted as saying in 1998 that "(e)veryone was against me, but I knew I was right."[10] On the other hand, it has also been argued that medical researchers showed a proper degree of scientific scepticism until the H. pylori hypothesis could be supported by evidence.[11]
In 1982 Marshall and Warren got a funding for a one year research. The first 30 out of 100 samples showed no support for their hypothesis. However, it was discovered that the lab technicians had been throwing out the cultures after 2 days. This was standard practice for throat swabs where other organisms in the mouth rendered cultures as not useful after 2 days. Due to other hospital work, the lab technicians did not have time to immediately throw out the 31st test on the second day, and so it stayed from Thursday through to the Monday. In this sample, they discovered the presence of H. pylori. It turns out that H. pylori grow more slowly than 2 days, and also that the stomach cultures are not contaminated by other organisms.[12]
In 1983 they submitted their findings so far to the Gastroenterological Society of Australia, but the reviewers turned their paper down, rating it in the bottom 10% of those they received in 1983.[12]
After failed attempts to infect piglets in 1984, Marshall, after having a baseline endoscopy done, drank a broth containing cultured H. pylori, expecting to develop, perhaps years later, an ulcer.[13] He was surprised when, only three days later, he developed vague nausea and halitosis (due to the achlorhydria, there was no acid to kill bacteria in the stomach, and their waste products manifested as bad breath), noticed only by his mother. On days 5–8, he developed achlorydric (no acid) vomiting. On day eight, he had a repeat endoscopy, which showed massive inflammation (gastritis), and a biopsy from which H. pylori was cultured, showing it had colonised his stomach. On the fourteenth day after ingestion, a third endoscopy was done, and Marshall began to take antibiotics.[14] Marshall did not develop antibodies to H. pylori, suggesting that innate immunity can sometimes eradicate acute H. pylori infection. Marshall's illness and recovery, based on a culture of organisms extracted from a patient, fulfilled Koch's postulates for H. pylori and gastritis, but not for peptic ulcer. This experiment was published in 1985 in the Medical Journal of Australia[15] and is among the most cited articles from the journal.[16]
The point of mentioning this is that the medical profession are slow/reluctant/averse to recognise change and we must persevere with the struggle
I'm sure I read a New Scientist article about this several years ago. The tale of the doctor infecting himself when his research wasn't accepted stuck in my mind. I do hope he made a full recovery!
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