Originally published October 11 2005
Nobel laureates make an important discovery about peptic ulcer disease
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Barry J. Marshall and J. Robin Warren, Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine, discovered that gastritis and stomach ulceration (peptic ulcer disease) result from an infection caused by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori.
THIS YEAR'S Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine challenged prevailing dogmas and made the remarkable and unexpected discovery that inflammation in the stomach (gastritis) as well as ulceration of the stomach or duodenum (peptic ulcer disease) are the result of an infection of the stomach caused by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori.
But things changed when Warren observed small curved bacteria colonising the lower part of the stomach (antrum) in about 50 per cent of patients from whom biopsies had been taken.
He made the crucial observation that signs of inflammation were always present in the gastric mucosa close to where the bacteria were seen.
The first success came when Marshall succeeded in cultivating a hitherto unknown bacterial species (later denoted Helicobacter pylori) from several of these biopsies.
It is now firmly established that Helicobacter pylori causes more than 90 per cent of duodenal ulcers and up to 80 per cent of gastric ulcers.
The link between Helicobacter pylori infection and subsequent gastritis and peptic ulcer disease has been established through studies of human volunteers, antibiotic treatment studies and epidemiological studies.
Thanks to the pioneering discovery by Marshall and Warren, peptic ulcer disease is no longer a chronic, frequently disabling condition, but a disease that can be cured by a short regimen of antibiotics and acid secretion inhibitors.
Helicobacter pylori is a spiral-shaped Gram-negative bacterium that colonises the stomach in about 50 per cent of all humans.
This results in a more widespread inflammation that predisposes not only to ulcer in the corpus region, but also to stomach cancer.
Antibiotics treatment can get rid of the bacteria.
But an indiscriminate use of antibiotics to eradicate the bacteria from healthy carriers would lead to drug resistance.
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