Media type: E-Article Title: Helicobacter pylori and the risk of benign and malignant biliary tract disease Contributor: Bulajic, Milutin; Maisonneuve, Patrick; Schneider‐Brachert, Wulf; Müller, Petra; Reischl, Udo; Stimec, Bojan; Lehn, Norbert; Lowenfels, Albert B.; Löhr, Matthias imprint: Wiley, 2002 Published in: Cancer Language: English DOI: 10.1002/cncr.10893 ISSN: 0008-543X; 1097-0142 Keywords: Cancer Research ; Oncology Origination: Footnote: Description: <jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:sec><jats:title>BACKGROUND</jats:title><jats:p>The etiology of tumors arising in the biliary tract remains unclear. Several previous studies have detected <jats:italic>Helicobacter pylori</jats:italic> organisms in bile from patients with gallstones or cholecystitis. The objective of this study was to determine whether there is an association between <jats:italic>H. pylori</jats:italic> in bile and biliary tract carcinoma.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>METHODS</jats:title><jats:p>The authors used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays to detect the presence of <jats:italic>H. pylori</jats:italic> in the stomach and bile from 89 patients: Sixty‐three disease free patients had biliary calculi, 15 patients had carcinoma of the biliary tract, and 11 patients had neither gallstones nor carcinoma. Bile was considered to contain <jats:italic>H. pylori</jats:italic> only if the results of PCR determinations were positive in two or more samples assayed independently in two separate laboratories.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>RESULTS</jats:title><jats:p>There was a strong association between the presence of <jats:italic>H. pylori</jats:italic> in the stomach and in the bile (<jats:italic>P</jats:italic> ≤ 0.01). Biliary <jats:italic>H. pylori</jats:italic> was associated with age but not with gender, and it was associated strongly with the clinical diagnosis. Patients with gallstones were 3.5 times as likely to have <jats:italic>H. pylori</jats:italic> in the bile compared with patients in a control group (95% confidence interval [95%CI], 0.8–15.8; <jats:italic>P</jats:italic> = 0.100), and <jats:italic>H. pylori</jats:italic> was 9.9 times more frequent in patients with biliary tract carcinoma compared with patients in the control group (95%CI, 1.4–70.5; <jats:italic>P</jats:italic> = 0.022).</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>CONCLUSIONS</jats:title><jats:p>There is a strong association between biliary tract carcinoma and <jats:italic>H. pylori</jats:italic> in bile. If these results are confirmed by prospective studies, <jats:italic>H. pylori</jats:italic> may be responsible for a significant proportion of malignant biliary tract disease. Cancer 2002;95:1946–53. © 2002 American Cancer Society.</jats:p><jats:p>DOI 10.1002/cncr.10893</jats:p></jats:sec> Access State: Open Access