Epidemiological and Pathophysiological Review of Helicobacter pylori
Abstract
Helicobacter pylori infection induces chronic gastritis, peptic ulcer disease, gastric cancer and a number of extragastric related morbidities. Hence, it is now recognized as a worldwide problem. Although clinical outcomes are dependent upon bacterial prevalence, virulence factors, host genetic diversity and environment, focus of this review is on recent findings relevant to epidemiology and gastric pathophysiology of H. pylori infection. This article presents a review of the published literature mainly from last 15 years. The topics of main concerns were bacterial epidemiology, virulent factors and the inflammatory response of H. pylori infection. The authors used MeSH terms “Helicobacter” with “pathophysiology,” “pathogenesis,” or “gastric inflammation” to search PubMed database. All relevant studies identified were included and are described according to the aforementioned subheadings.