H. pylori causes >90% of the cases of gastritis, peptic ulcer and stomach cancer. Current diagnostic methods are far from optimal: serologic tests cannot indicate whether H. pylori has been eradicated or determine bacterial antibiotic resistance and therefore, cannot monitor efficacy of treatment or recrudescence; breath tests for urea require expensive and specialized equipment and reagents; and the identification of H. pylori in gastric biopsies, the diagnostic "gold standard" is compromised by the difficulties of culturing the bacterium. The investigators have found that certain fluorocarbons enhance the ability to culture H. pylori on agar plates, apparently by aiding the maintenance of HP in the spiral (pathogenic) culturable form and preventing their conversion to the dormant coccoid form. Thus, the agar-fluorocarbon interface may mimic the gastric environment and provide an improved environment for HP growth. They propose to evaluate the utility of fluorocarbons in enabling the reproducible culture of this pathogen from human gastric biopsies and, possibly, from stool of infected patients. A successful outcome of this research to develop improved culture methodology would greatly facilitate diagnosis of HP infections in clinical microbiology laboratories as well as the study of the pathogenesis of Helicobacter- associated gastric disease. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATION: The intended applications, should the research prove fruitful, are use of fluorocarbons as additives to commercially available culture packs for microaerophilic microbes. This would enable H. pylori to be culture reproducibly for clinical diagnostic use.
