In our group comprising of 70 subjects, 60 patients presented with symptomatic gastritis and 10 were asymptomatic subjects who served as the control group. The symptomatic gastritis subjects had undergone endoscopy and gastric biopsy specimen was collected. Histopathologically, the biopsy specimen was observed for the presence of Helicobacter pylori. The subjects were divided into 3 groups.
Group I comprised of 30 subjects with Helicobacter pylori in their gastric mucosa.
Group II comprised of 30 subjects without Helicobacter pylori in their gastric mucosa.
Group III comprised of 10 asymptomatic controls.
• We found that there was a male predominance for gastritis in our study groups. The symptomatic gastritis was more commonly seen between the 3rd and 5th decade of life.
• Our study findings conclude that subjects who are less than 30 years of age are more prone to have Candida in their saliva.
• There was no difference in the mean CFU between the study groups and the mean CFU between the age groups did not show statistical difference. But, when stratified between gender, there was an increase in CFU with increasing age.
• We found that oral candida carriage was more frequently seen in the younger age group and odd’s have shown that when compared to subjects above 50 years, symptomatic subjects less than 30 years have 7.5 times higher risk of getting salivary candidal carriage.
• We found that there is no correlation between the presence or absence of salivary Helicobacter pylori and the presence or absence of Helicobacter pylori in the gastric mucosa. There was no correlation between salivary candida and the presence or absence of Helicobacter pylori in the gastric mucosa.
• In our study, the patients with Candida and Helicobacter pylori in the saliva had 8 times more chance of having gastritis with Helicobacter pylori positivity in their gastric mucosa than in whom these organisms were not detected.
• Further studies are needed to understand the relationship of Helicobacter pylori, Candida and gastritis
