Comment on "Gastric and colon metastasis from breast cancer: case report, review of the literature, and possible underlying mechanisms’’

Amin Talebi Bezmin Abadi Department of Bacteriology, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, IranI have read the interesting case report by Villa Guzmán et al recently published in Breast Cancer (Dove Med Press).1 A female heavy smoker was diagnosed with lobular breast cancer. The authors hypothesized that Helicobacter pylori infection can attract chemokines attributed with local inflammation which ends in tumor cells’ migration. Concerning H. pylori and the presented hypothesis, I have some points which are listed as follows.Read the original article by Villa Guzmán and colleagues

World Health Organization Report: Current Crisis of Antibiotic Resistance

© 2019, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature. Antibiotic resistance is the most challenging clinical and public health problem. Despite of living in the era of novel technologies in biomedical research, many of untreatable infectious diseases are ranked as the main causes of human death worldwide. Increased antibiotic use in human and use in animal production are the two major causes of emergence of resistant bacteria in hospitals, human communities, and also animal farms. Current body of evidences is indicating that major factors that led to existing crisis on antibiotics worldwide are poor educational programs on hygiene and health, inappropriate prescription in addition to the overprescription in clinical settings (mainly in developing countries with easier access to the antibiotics) and lack of accurate diagnostic tools in laboratories in order to control the emergence of antibiotics against widely used drugs in community. It sounds using the antibodies against problematic bacteria in farms has more benefits than treating them with susceptible antibiotics. As best strategy, we pointed that the crisis of antibiotic resistance may be solved when all contributors be acknowledged to their responsibilities and duties to minimize this global problem threatening the human health. China and the USA as the two main antibiotics user in industrial scale should have taken new policy in meat industry. Currently, antibiotic resistance presents a growing health threat worldwide being the cause of many nosocomial and often deadly infections

Helicobacter pylori and Its antibiotic heteroresistance: A neglected Issue in published guidelines

International audience"Heteroresistance" is a widely applied term that characterizes most of the multidrug-resistant microorganisms. In microbiological practice, the word "heteroresistance" indicates diverse responses to specific antibiotics by bacterial subpopulations in the same patient. These resistant subpopulations of heteroresistant strains do not respond to antibiotic therapy in vitro or in vivo. Presently, there is no standard protocol available for the treatment of infections caused by heteroresistant Helicobacter pylori in clinical settings, at least according to recent guidelines. Thus, there is a definite need to open a new discussion on how to recognize, how to screen, and how to eliminate those problematic strains in clinical and environmental samples. Since there is great interest in developing new strategies to improve the eradication rate of anti-H. pylon treatments, the presence of heteroresistant strains/clones among clinical isolates of the bacteria should be taken into account. Indeed, increased knowledge of gastroenterologists about the existence of heteroresistance phenomena is highly required. Moreover, the accurate breakpoints should be examined/determined in order to have a solid statement of heteroresistance among the H. pylori isolates. The primary definition of heteroresistance was about coexistence of both resistant and susceptible isolates at the similar gastric microniche at once, while we think that it can be happened subsequently as well. The new guidelines should include a personalized aspect in the standard protocol to select a precise, effective antibiotic therapy for infected patients and also address the problems of regional antibiotic susceptibility profiles

Clinical relevance of the cagA, tnpA and tnpB genes in Helicobacter pylori

BACKGROUND: Numerous proteins have been proposed as virulence factors for the gram negative gastric bacterium Helicobacter pylori but only for a few this has unequivocally been demonstrated. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the association of the putative virulence factors tnpA and tnpB (no cagA) with H. pylori associated gastroduodenal diseases. METHODS: A PCR based assay was used to determine the presence of the tnpA and tnpB genes, as well as of cagA, in 360H. pylori strains isolated from H. pylori infected patients. RESULTS: Of 360 H. pylori culture positive patients (196 men, 164 women; average age 42.1 years (range 17-73), 95 had gastritis, 92 had gastric ulcers, 108 had duodenal ulcers, and 65 had gastric cancer. Using the gastritis group as a reference a significantly aberrant gene distribution was observed for the tnpA (Relative risk: 1.45; 95% CI 1.04-1.93), the cagA (Relative risk: 1.81; 95% CI 1.44-2.29), but not the tnpB gene in the gastric cancer group. CONCLUSIONS: The increased incidence of the tnpA gene in gastric cancer patients suggests a role of the tnpA gene in the development of H. pylori induced gastric cancer

Detection of the Helicobacter pylori dupA gene is strongly affected by the PCR design

The Helicobacter pylori virulence gene dupA is usually detected by PCR, but the primer binding sites used are highly variable. Our newly designed qPCR against a conserved region of dupA was positive in 64.2% of 394 clinical isolates while the positivity rate of the commonly used PCRs ranged from 29.9% to 37.8%