Western blotting of total lysate of Helicobacter pylori in cases of atrophic body gastritis.
BACKGROUND
Atrophic body gastritis is considered the first important step in the histogenesis of gastric carcinoma, a multistep process starting from chronic gastritis and progressing through chronic atrophic gastritis, intestinal metaplasia, and dysplasia. Helicobacter pylori is involved in the induction of atrophic body gastritis, but documentation of H. pylori infection is difficult because of the progressive disappearance of the bacterium. Our study aimed to detect past H. pylori infection in patients with atrophic body gastritis.


METHODS
We used Western blot analyses of whole bacterial protein lysate of 2 different strains to probe sera from 143 patients. All sera were analyzed by ELISA (Bio-Rad), and results of gastric histology were available for all patients.


RESULTS
Among 111 patient sera previously classified as negative for H. pylori infection by ELISA, 106 (95.5%) were positive when assayed by immunoblotting.


CONCLUSIONS
Commercial diagnostic reagent sets may fail to detect H. pylori infection. Western blotting of whole bacterial protein extracts could provide the basis of a noninvasive serology tool able to assess previous infection with H. pylori in patients with atrophic body gastritis.
Mini
Roberta
R
Dipartimento di Biologia Molecolare, Policlinico Le Scotte, Università degli Studi di Siena, Siena, Italy.
Annibale
Bruno
B
Lahner
Edith
E
Bernardini
Giulia
G
Figura
Natale
N
Santucci
Annalisa
A
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000907:Antibodies, Bacterial / Q000032:analysis; D000942:Antigens, Bacterial / Q000276:immunology; D015153:Blotting, Western; D004591:Electrophoresis, Polyacrylamide Gel; D004797:Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay; D005260:Female; D005753:Gastric Mucosa / Q000382:microbiology / Q000473:pathology; D005757:Gastritis, Atrophic / Q000209:etiology* / Q000473:pathology; D016481:Helicobacter Infections / Q000150:complications / Q000382:microbiology* / Q000473:pathology; D016480:Helicobacter pylori / Q000276:immunology / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012698:Serologic Tests
D000907:Antibodies, Bacterial; D000942:Antigens, Bacterial