H. Pylori Linked to Atherosclerosis in Healthy People

[style=font-weight: bold;]Current infection with Helicobacter pylori (H. Pylori) was associated with significant subclinical coronary artery stenosis in a population with no prior arterial disease, suggesting a need for earlier diagnosis and treatment of this pathogen to forestall progression to overt disease, researchers reported.[/style]
This result suggests the possibility that [style=font-style: italic;]H. pylori[/style] eradication might be worthwhile in preventing coronary artery disease, Shinae Kang, MD, PhD, of Yonsei University College of Medicine in Seoul, South Korea, and colleagues wrote online in [style=font-style: italic;]PLoS One[/style].

• To address [style=font-style: italic;]H. pylori[/style]'s impact on the arteries of healthy individuals, Kang's group studied 463 consecutive patients who underwent voluntary health check-ups at Gangnam Severance Hospital in Seoul during 2007-2014. The mean age of participants was 54.2, and 336 were men.


• The patients underwent post-biopsy rapid urease testing of gastric mucosa, using the [style=font-style: italic;]Campylobacter[/style]-like organism test (CLO) and were then divided into two groups based on CLO status. Patients also underwent pulse-wave velocity (PWV) measurement and cardiac multidetector computed tomography.


• With significant coronary artery narrowing defined in the study as ?50% stenosis in any major epicardial coronary vessels or branches, the CLO-positive group (n=224) was more than twice as likely as the CLO-negative group (n=239) to have significant stenosis, with an incidence of 7.6% versus 2.9% ([style=font-style: italic;]P[/style]=0.01).


• Even after the researchers adjusted for confounding factors, the positive group had an adjusted odds ratio of 2.813 (95% CI 1.051-7.528, [style=font-style: italic;]P[/style]=0.04).


• CLO-positive participants also had lower mean high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL) compared with CLO-negative subjects: 46.6 versus 49.6 mg/dL. Triglyceride levels were also higher, at 134.5 versus 116.4 mg/dL. Furthermore, the number of participants who had coronary artery calcium scores >0 was significantly greater in the CLO-positive group, and the number of vessel segments with plaque was slightly higher in CLO-positive patients, at 0.22 versus 0.17 ([style=font-style: italic;]P[/style]=0.03).

"H. Pylori Linked to Atherosclerosis in Healthy People," [style=font-style: italic;]Medpage Today,[/style]March 31, 2018, https://www.medpagetoday.com/gastroenterology/generalgastroenterology/72089