Premalignant Gastric Lesions in Patients Included in National Colorectal Cancer Screening.

BACKGROUND: Gastric cancer is the fifth most common malignancy in the world with almost one million new cases annually. Helicobacter pylori infection causes 89% of all gastric cancers. Premalignant lesions (atrophy and intestinal metaplasia) develop after several decades of inflammation. Secondary prevention with gastroscopy is possible, but it is costly and has a low compliance rate. Alternative procedures like serology testing for pepsinogen I and II and pepsinogen I/II ratio are available to select patients for surveillance gastroscopies. PATIENTS AND METHODS: In seven outpatient endoscopic units, 288 patients (154 men; 53.5%), average age 60.68 years, tested positive in National colorectal cancer screening programme SVIT, were included in the study. Gastropanel (BioHit, Finland) was used as a serologic biopsy method. RESULTS: We found 24 patients (12 men, mean age 63.7 years) with pepsinogen (pepsinogen I/II < 3 and/or pepsinogen I < 30 µg/L). Premalignant changes were found on gastric biopsies in 21 patients (7.3% incidence). Operative Link on Gastric Intestinal Metaplasia Assessment (OLGIM) ≥ 1 was found in 20 patients; Operative Link for Gastritis Assessment (OLGA) ≥ 1 was found in 19 patients. Combined accuracy for preneoplastic lesions in Gastropanel positive patients was 87.5%. H. pylori seropositivity was found in 219 patients (76%). Only 24% of our population had normal results. CONCLUSIONS: Gastropanel test has proven to be a reliable non-invasive test for advanced gastric preneoplastic lesions that can select patients for further gastroscopy. We found high H. pylori seropositivity in older age groups in Slovenia.

Randomized clinical trial comparing 10-day sequential, 7-day concomitant and 7-day standard triple therapies for Helicobacter pylori eradication.

OBJECTIVES: To compare triple therapy with sequential and concomitant therapies directly in a head-to-head comparison in Helicobacter pylori-infected patients. DESIGN: Patients were allocated randomly as follows: a triple therapy with esomeprazole (20 mg), amoxicillin (1000 mg) and clarithromycin (500 mg) twice daily for 7 days; a sequential therapy with 5 days of esomeprazole (20 mg) and amoxicillin (1000 mg) twice daily, followed by 5 days of esomeprazole (20 mg), clarithromycin (500 mg) and metronidazole (400 mg) twice daily; or a concomitant therapy consisting of esomeprazole (20 mg), amoxicillin (1000 mg), clarithromycin (500 mg) and metronidazole (400 mg) twice daily for 7 days. RESULTS: A total of 356 consecutive patients were included. The eradication rates for the triple, sequential and concomitant therapies were 83.6% [95% confidence interval (CI) 76.9-90.4%], 94.2% (95% CI 90.0-98.4%) and 91.7% (95% CI 86.7-96.6%), respectively, in the intention-to-treat population. The differences were significant only between triple and sequential therapies (P=0.01). The primary resistance rates to amoxicillin, clarithromycin and metronidazole were 0.6, 10.5 and 25.9%, respectively. Concomitant therapy was significantly better than triple therapy in cases with clarithromycin resistance (P=0.01). CONCLUSION: Ten-day sequential therapy was significantly better than 7-day triple therapy in a clinical setting with low rates of clarithromycin and dual resistance. Concomitant therapy was significantly better than standard triple therapy in the subgroup of patients with clarithromycin-resistant strains.