Tag Archives: gastric and duodenal ulcers

Helicobacter pylori & allergy-induced asthma

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Researchers have indicated that infection with the gastric bacterium Helicobacter pylori provides reliable protection against allergy-induced asthma.

The results confirmed the hypothesis recently put forward that the dramatic increase in allergic diseases in industrial societies is linked to the rapid disappearance of specific micro-organisms that populate the human body.

Scientists from the University of Zurich and the University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz have now revealed that the increase in asthma could be put down to the specific disappearance of the gastric bacterium Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) from Western societies.

Asthma

Asthma

H. pylori is resistant to gastric acid. The affliction often has no symptoms, but under certain conditions can cause gastritis, gastric and duodenal ulcers, and stomach cancer. Consequently, H. pylori is often killed off with antibiotics as a precaution, even if the patient does not have any complaints.

For their study, the researchers infected mice with H. pylori bacteria. If the mice were infected at the age of a few days old, they developed immunological tolerance to the bacterium and even reacted insignificantly – if at all – to strong, asthma-inducing allergens. Mice that were not infected with H. pylori until they had reached adulthood, however, had a much weaker defence.


“Early infection impairs the maturation of the dendritic cells and triggers the accumulation of regulatory T-cells that are crucial for the suppression of asthma,” said Anne Muller, a professor of molecular cancer research at the University of Zurich, explaining the protective mechanism.

If regulatory T-cells were transferred from infected to uninfected mice, they too enjoyed effective protection against allergy-induced asthma. However, mice that had been infected early also lost their resistance to asthma-inducing allergens if H. pylori were killed off in them with the aid of antibiotics after the sensitisation phase.

The study has been published in the prestigious Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Bacteria that may treat ulcers

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Spanish scientists have identified a strain of probiotic bacteria that may be useful in treating ulcers caused by Helicobacter pylori.

“H. pylori is considered one of the major risk factors underlying the development of gastritis and gastric and duodenal ulcers,” according to the researchers.

“Currently, antibiotic-based treatment for H. pylori infection is neither sufficient nor satisfactory, with the most successful treatments reaching 75 to 90pc eradication rates. The use of probiotics is a potentially promising tool to prevent H. pylori,” the researchers said.

According to an expert consultation conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization probiotics are “live microorganisms which when administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit to the host.”

The regular intake of probiotic microoganisms has been demonstrated to prevent several disorders including diarrhea and inflammatory bowel disease.

Among probiotics Bifidobacterium is one of the favorite genera in studies focused on the prevention of gastrointestinal infection and is often used in fermented dairy products or food supplements.

Helicobacter pylori

Helicobacter pylori

Some studies have been done in vitro (in test tubes or petri dishes) showing bifidobacterial activity against H. pylori.

In this study, the researchers tested numerous strains of bifidobacteria isolated from the feces of breast-fed infants for activity against H. pylori.

They identified one strain (Bifidobacterium bifidum CECT 7366) that under certain conditions had an inhibition level of nearly 95 percent in vitro and tested its activity against infection in mice.


After 21 days, mice treated with the potentially probiotic strain developed significantly less ulcers than the control group.

Additional tests suggest that treatment partially relieved damage to gastric tissue caused by H. pylori infection. Ingestion of the bacteria did not induce any disease or mortality in both healthy and immunocompromised mice.

The findings appeared in the February 2011 issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.