Prevalence of atrophic gastritis in dyspeptic patients in Piedmont. A survey using the GastroPanel test.

BACKGROUND: Chronic atrophic gastritis (CAG) is a precursor of the intestinal type of gastric cancer, the second leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. GastroPanel is a recently marketed serological kit for the non-invasive diagnosis of CAG, defined by some authors "even more reliable than biopsy histology". The goal of this study was 1) to evaluate the agreement between the serum gastric profile provided by GastroPanel (PGI, PGII, G-17, AbHp) and histology over CAG diagnosis, and 2) to evaluate the prevalence of CAG by means of GastroPanel in a Northern Italian dyspeptic population. METHODS: Basal blood samples for GastroPanel parameters evaluation (Biohit Plc, Finland) were collected after an overnight fast from 1387 dyspeptic patients (age range: 18-80 years; F 704). Gastroscopy with two biopsies each of the antrum and corpus was offered to a group of the first 400 consecutive patients (age 18-80 years, F 214) to compare the results of histology and GastroPanel in CAG. RESULTS: Agreement between GastroPanel and histology for corpus-prevalent CAG was 94%, with a sensitivity and specificity of 80% and 96%, respectively. In our series of 1387 dyspeptic patients, the prevalence of corpus-prevalent CAG, of antral-prevalent CAG and of multifocal CAG (antrum+ corpus) was 10.7%, 3.6% and 2.4%, respectively. Out of the 34 patients with multifocal atrophic gastritis, 12% were under 30 years of age. CONCLUSIONS: GastroPanel is a reliable non-invasive test for diagnosis of CAG and deserves consideration for current use in clinical practice as a valuable diagnostic tool.