Nobel prize for medicine awarded to discoverers of H. pylori
Helicobacter pylori, the stomach bacteria best known for causing stomach and duodenal ulcers was discovered in 1982 by Doctors Robin Warren and Barry Marshall. The organism is one of the only bacteria able to survive in the low pH in the stomach which can dip as low as 1 to 2 after a person eats a meal. A stomach ulcer (image), of course is a hole in a mucosal lining of the stomach which causes inflammation and bleeding. Before the bacterial cause was found, however, many people died because the root cause of the ulcer was never fixed.
In the days before the discovery of H. pylori, people thought that ulcers were caused by stress and a poor diet. While these things can help trigger an ulcer, they generally aren’t the root cause. By identifying the underlying culprit, not only did Doctors Warren and Marshall help many people suffering from ulcers get better, but they also changed the way society looked at those who had ulcers. Instead of being looked at almost as a moral problem, they made it a “real” physical ailment by isolating its cause.
So determined was Dr. Marshall to prove that H. pylori was the cause that he infected himself with it to prove once and for all that it was, indeed, the culprit. Because H. pylori prefers an acidic environment, it can stimulate the parietal cells to secrete more acid which can further damage the mucosal lining, which can lead to bleeding and eventually death. H2 blockers and proton-pump inhibitors (PPIs) can decrease the amount of acid in the stomach, but they don’t completely get rid of the problem, they just stifle one of the symptoms. Combining a PPI and antibiotics (generally two at a time), you can get rid of the ulcer for good — or at least until the next infection. Generally, amoxicillin with Flagyl or Biaxin is used to treat an ulcer.
While deadly stomach ulcers are generally a thing of the past in first-world societies, they’re still a huge problem in developing countries, where almost everyone has an H. pylori infection, even over 20 years after the discovery of our little friend.
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