Microorganism News

The Culprit of Gastric Disease—Helicobacter Pylori

Helicobacter Pylori, first found by Barry J. Marshall and J. Robin Warren, is a unipolar and curved spiral bacterium. The founding of HP also promote the two scientist get Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2005. Helicobacter Pylori can live at many spaces of stomach and PH of Gastric are usually typical spiral or curved. When developing it on the solid medium, it may have different shapes, such as rod-shaped and spherical. In addition, PH is a microaerophilic bacterium and it requires an aerobic environment to grow up, so it fails to be developed in atmospheric or absolute anaerobic environment.Helicobacter Pylori detection reagent become the most widely used tool to test PH.

How dose PH lead to disease? First, PH enters human body and make people produce specific cellular and humoral immunity. Then people have immune action and it will damage gastrointestinal mucosa. After the damaging of gastrointestinal mucosa, gastritis may change into gastric cancer. This is the common changing process: atrophic gastritis chronic gastritis → intestinal metaplasia → dysplasia → cancer. Removing HP can stop the changing process. In addition, many patients who are infected with HP perform negative and have neither obvious symptom of infection of HP nor acute symptoms of gastritis. So many patients will go to hospital for the symptom chronic gastritis , peptic ulcer. According to a research, infection leads to acute gastritis and unhealed disease will develops into chronic gastritis. What’s more, the incubation period of acute infection is from 2 to 7days. It perform as Acute congestive antral erosion , histology mucosa congestion, edema and neutrophil infiltration under the gastroscopy. The symptoms are abdominal pain, bloating , early morning nausea , acid reflux and belching and the worse symptom is vomiting. There is no doubt that Helicobacter Pylori is the main reason that arise gastric disease.

How does HP transmit? There are mainly five ways of transmission. First, eating too much picy food. It can damage the gastric mucosa and weaken the immunity of stomach. Second, eating raw food. It is regarded as the most frequent routes to get infected with HP. Third, having dinner with various people. Fourth, HP can grow and reproduce in plaque and caries. Fifth, kissing. Because saliva contains HP.

So improve personal hygiene and have a healthy life style to keep gastric cancer from you.