Helicobacter pylori infection and chronic active gastritis.

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) is an S-Shaped, gram-negative bacillus that recently has been implicated in the pathogenesis of chronic active gastritis and other peptic ulcer disease. These findings have encouraged gastroenterologists to provide a new rationale for patient management, with hope of providing more successful treatment of peptic ulcer disease, particularly gastritis. Therefore, a cooperative diagnostic effort was made at the pathology laboratory of St Francis Medical Center to adopt a simple and reliable method for the identification of H. pylori in tissue sections of endoscopic biopsies of stomach and duodenum. We attempted to estimate the prevalence of H. pylori infection in patients biopsied for upper Gl disorders who were refractory to medication. A prevalence of H. pylori infection among different ethnic groups also was studied.