Treatment strategies for reducing early and late recurrence of colonic diverticular bleeding based on stigmata of recent hemorrhage: a large multicenter study.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Treatment strategies for colonic diverticular bleeding (CDB) based on stigmata of recent hemorrhage (SRH) remain unstandardized, and no large studies have evaluated their effectiveness. We sought to identify the best strategy among combinations of SRH identification and endoscopic treatment strategies. METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed 5823 CDB patients who underwent colonoscopy at 49 hospitals throughout Japan (CODE-BLUE J-Study). Three strategies were compared: find SRH (definitive CDB) and treat endoscopically, find SRH (definitive CDB) and treat conservatively, and without finding SRH (presumptive CDB) treat conservatively. In conducting pairwise comparisons of outcomes in these groups, we used propensity score-matching analysis to balance baseline characteristics between the groups being compared. RESULTS: Both early and late recurrent bleeding rates were significantly lower in patients with definitive CDB treated endoscopically than in those with presumptive CDB treated conservatively (<30 days, 19.6% vs 26.0% [P < .001]; <365 days, 33.7% vs 41.6% [P < .001], respectively). In patients with definitive CDB, the early recurrent bleeding rate was significantly lower in those treated endoscopically than in those treated conservatively (17.4% vs 26.7% [P = .038] for a single test of hypothesis; however, correction for multiple testing of data removed this significance). The late recurrent bleeding rate was also lower, but not significantly, in those treated endoscopically (32.0% vs 36.1%, P = .426). Definitive CDB treated endoscopically showed significantly lower early and late recurrent bleeding rates than when treated conservatively in cases of SRH with active bleeding, nonactive bleeding, and in the right-sided colon but not left-sided colon. CONCLUSIONS: Treating definitive CDB endoscopically was most effective in reducing recurrent bleeding over the short and long term, compared with not treating definitive CDB or presumptive CDB. Physicians should endeavor to find and treat SRH for suspected CDB.

Personalized medicine for eradication of Helicobacter pylori.

Regimens for eradication of Helicobacter pylori consist of a proton-pump inhibitor (PPI) and one or two antimicrobial agents, such as amoxicillin, clarithromycin or metronidazole. As the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of PPIs are affected by polymorphism of CYP2C19, doses and dosing schemes of a PPI should be optimized based on genotype status of each patient in order to yield higher eradication rates. PPIs affect the pharmacokinetics of other substrates of CYP2C19, such as warfarin and diazepam. Acid inhibition induced by a PPI also affects the pharmacokinetics of some drugs, such as itraconazole. Clarithromycin, one of the most frequently used antimicrobial agents in eradication of H. pylori, inhibits activity of CYP3A4, meaning that the pharmacokinetics of substrates of CYP3A4 are affected by clarithromycin. Therefore, clinicians must pay attention to the other drugs dosed to each of their patients. Therefore, the eradication regimen for H. pylori infection should be designed with the CYP2C19 genotype status, bacterial susceptibility to antimicrobial agents, and other drugs being taken by each patient having been taken into consideration.