ORIGINAL ARTICLES   

Panminerva Medica 2000 September;42(3):183-6

Copyright © 2009 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

lingua: Inglese

Seroprevalence of Helicobacter pylori infection in a group of hospitalized geriatric patients

Biagi P., Fabbrini D. *, Bocchini S. **

From the Department of Internal Medicine Azienda Ospedaliera Senese Presidio Ospedaliero di Abbadia S. Salvatore (SI), Italy *Department of Respiratory Disease University of Siena, Italy **Department of Internal Medicine A, USL 7 Presidio Ospedaliero di Chianciano (SI), Italy

Background. In ­recent ­years sev­er­al epi­dem­i­olog­i­cal sur­veys ­have report­ed the asso­ci­a­tion ­between Helicobacter Pylori (HP), chron­ic ischem­ic ­heart dis­ease (CHD) and cereb­ro­vas­cu­lar dis­ease (CVD). None ­involved the ger­i­at­ric pop­u­la­tion in ­which ­these dis­eas­es are prev­a­lent.
Methods. We inves­ti­gat­ed the HP ser­o­pos­i­tiv­ity prev­a­lence in a ­group of ­over 75-­year-old sub­jects recruit­ed ­among all ­patients con­sec­u­tive­ly admit­ted for var­i­ous dis­eas­es in an Internal Medicine Department dur­ing a peri­od of 9 ­months. Intervention: We meas­ured HP IgG anti­bod­ies employ­ing a com­mer­cial­ly avail­able kit ­based on ­reverse ­flow chrom­a­tog­ra­phy high­ly fea­sible and sim­ple to per­form and we inves­ti­gat­ed all ­patients for ­past or ­present CHD/CVD.
Results. From our ­data, the prev­a­lence of ser­o­pos­i­tiv­ity to Hp ­does not dif­fer ­from oth­er wid­er age strat­i­fied stud­ies; ­more in ­detail; in the ­over 90-­year-old ­patients we ­found the ­same HP ser­o­pos­i­tiv­ity prev­a­lence as in young­er ­group but ­were not ­able to con­firm the pro­gres­sive low­er­ing or ser­o­prev­a­lence in ­extreme ger­i­at­ric age.
Conclusions. No ­clear cor­re­la­tion ­between HP ser­o­prev­a­lence and CHD and CVD was ­found, but a ­link ­with CHD ­seems pos­sible for the deter­mi­nant (age) is com­mon to ­both con­di­tions.