Journal of Advanced Research

Journal of Advanced Research

Volume 13, September 2018, Pages 51-57
Journal of Advanced Research

Mini Review
Helicobacter pylori urease for diagnosis of Helicobacter pylori infection: A mini review

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jare.2018.01.006Get rights and content
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open access

Abstract

The stomach contents contain of both acid and proteolytic enzymes. How the stomach digests food without damaging itself remained a topic of investigation for decades. One candidate was gastric urease, which neutralized acid by producing ammonia from urea diffusing from the blood and potentially could protect the stomach. Discovery that gastric urease was not mammalian resulted in a research hiatus until discovery that gastric urease was produce by Helicobacter pylori which caused gastritis, peptic ulcer and gastric cancer. Gastric urease allows the organism to colonize the acidic stomach and serves as a biomarker for the presence of H. pylori. Important clinical tests for H. pylori, the rapid urease test and urea breath test, are based on gastric urease. Rapid urease tests use gastric biopsies or mucus placed in a device containing urea and an indicator of pH change, typically phenol red. Urea breath tests measure the change in isotope enrichment of 13C- or 14CO2 in breath following oral administration of labeled urea. The urea breath test is non-invasive, convenient and accurate and the most widely used test for non-invasive test for detection of active H. pylori infection and for confirmation of cure after eradication therapy.

Keywords

Helicobacter pylori
Urea breath test
Rapid urea test
Gastric urease
Diagnosis
Confirmation of cure

Cited by (0)

David Y. Graham, M.D. is staff physician at the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical center, and a Professor in the Departments of Medicine and Molecular Virology and Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine, in Houston, TX. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, his M.D. degree with honor from Baylor University College of Medicine in 1966. He board certified in Medicine and Gastroenterology. Dr. Graham is the author of more than 1000 scientific papers, several books, and 125 chapters in medical text books. He is one of ISI's Highly Cited Researchers in Clinical Medicine. He has trained more than 125 foreign physician-scientists and more than 200 U.S. Gastroenterology fellows. He has patents regarding development of diagnostic tests for Helicobacter pylori infection, the cause of peptic ulcer and gastric cancer and for vaccine development of Norwalk virus infection, the most common cause of food borne and cruse ship associated diarrhea. His research currently focus on infectious and the intestine and includes studies with Helicobacter pylori, the cause of peptic ulcers and gastric cancer, rotavirus and Norwalk viruses, and Mycobacterium paratuberculosis which is suspected to be a cause of Crohn’s disease.

Muhammad Miftahussurur is a lecturer and practitioner at the Gastroentero-Hepatology Division, Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Airlangga University, Surabaya, Indonesia. He is also a researcher at the Institute of Tropical Disease, Indonesia. After received his Medical Doctor Degree in 2003 and Master degree in 2007 from Airlangga University, Indonesia, he completed training in Internal Medicine in 2012 at Airlangga University. Dr. Miftah obtained his PhD in Medical Sciences from the Oita University, Japan under Prof. Yoshio Yamaoka in 2016. In 2016 he did Post-Doctoral training at Baylor College Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA under Prof. David Y. Graham. In 2016 he received the honor of being the 2nd most productive Airlangga University lecturer in Scopus publication and the highest achievement lecturer in Airlangga University in 2017. He has scientific experience in molecular epidemiology, immunology, microbiology, and gastroenterology. Most recently, his work has focused on the gastric microbiota and Helicobacter pylori interaction in association with gastric cancer risk, especially in the Indonesian population, a country with low prevalence of H. pylori infection. He has published 26 peer-reviewed journal articles as authored or co-authored and reviews in the field gastrointestinal disease especially H. pylori.

Peer review under responsibility of Cairo University.