| Theme | Candidate Causes of H. pylori-Negative Gastric Cancer | |
|---|---|---|
| Title | Distribution of Histological Gastritis and the Development of Gastric Cancer | |
| Publish Date | 2006/07 | |
| Author | Naomi Uemura | Department of Gastroenterology, International Medical Center of Japan |
| [ Summary ] | In Japan, where the incidence of gastric cancer is the highest in the world due to the health care insurance system, which is different than that in Europe or the US, early-stage gastric cancer is more often discovered with endoscopy. This paper describes the development of gastric cancer without H. pylori infection in Japan. Our study shows that, during the 8 year follow-up, gastric cancer developed in 36 of the 1,246 H. pylori-infected patients (2.9 %), but in none of the 280 uninfected patients. In terms of the development status of gastric cancer over time, our study estimated the risk of gastric cancer in H. pylori-positive patients to be about 5 % over ten years. Epidemiologically, just as cancer of the liver is closely associated with hepatitis C viral infection, a majority of gastric cancers are known to develop from the persistent inflammation of the gastric mucosa caused byH. pylori infection. It is therefore considered rare for clinical gastric cancer to develop in uninfected patients-rigorously diagnosed after taking into account the possibility of false negative results occurring in various test methods-or, in other words, in gastric mucosa having no persistent inflammation. In the near future gastric cancer rates should decrease with the decrease of H. pylori infection rates in Japan. |
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