Helicobacter pylori-associated gastric pathological changes in Saudi patients.

The relation between Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) and pathological changes in gastric mucosa ranging from active superficial gastritis to chronic active deep gastritis accompanied with intestinal metaplasia and dysplastic changes to gastric carcinoma of different grades. Two hundred and sixty six (266) gastric biopsies were examined from Saudi patients. At the same time a total of (10) patients with antral gastritis were used as control. The age of the patients ranged from 16 - 58 years old. There was no difference of changes in between. The transition between these changes may be multifactorial processes in which H. pylori may play a part. The findings suggested that gastric cancer may be induced in the disease associated with H. pylori in spite that the etiology of gastric carcinoma has not been clearly identified. Results showed that H. pylori associated chronic gastritis was the associated disease in (8%) of patients with gastric cancer. The remaining (92%) seems to have normal stomach to severe corpus atrophy.