Empiric use of standard triple therapy in Helicobacter pylori eradication does not require readjustment in the clarithromycin resistance cut-off point

We appreciate the considerations of Hsu et al about the recommendation of empiric first-line therapies in our Maastricht VI/Florence consensus report for the management of Helicobacter pylori.1 2 We fully agree that H. pylori eradication therapy should aim at a cure rate of ≥90%. This also meets the expectation of patients as referred by the authors from a real-world expectation survey of the Asia-Pacific region.3 However, we disagree that the cut-off for clarithromycin resistance, at least for now, is too high at 15% for triple therapy consisting of proton pump inhibitor (PPI), amoxicillin and clarithromycin used as empirical first-line option.2 Hsu et al suggest a cutoff for clarithromycin resistance at or below 5 % for the empirical use of PPI-amoxicillin-clarithromycin and base their claim on a recent systematic review.4 However, this review has several relevant limitations: First, the…

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Marzo 2024

'Family-based strategy for Helicobacter pylori infection screening: an efficient alternative to 'test and treat strategy

We read with utmost interest the study by Zhou et al,1 which was the first family-based investigation of Helicobacter pylori (Hp) infection in China. The authors provided valuable insights into the occurrence of familial cluster effect on Hp infection and the superiority of the ‘family-based strategy’. However, their work failed to compare the screening efficiency of various established Hp management methods, leaving us curious about whether the ‘family-based strategy’ could identify more Hp-infected participants with equal number of tests conducted as compared with the widely used ‘test and treat strategy’.2 Fortunately, the family-unit data in Zhou’s study offers the possibility for such exploration. To address this gap, we built a database consisting of over one million households, based on the infection status of households and individuals from 29 provinces reported by Zhou, in order to simulate real-world scenarios. The screening protocols were simulated in national…

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Marzo 2024

Cut-off value of clarithromycin resistance in the treatment of Helicobacter pylori infection: how low is low?

We read the Maastricht VI/Florence consensus report for the management of Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection by Malfertheiner et al1 published in the Gut with great interest. The experts addressed that the goal of any antimicrobial therapy is to cure reliably H. pylori infection in the majority (eg, ≥90%) of patients. The goal of cure rate ≥90% meets the expectation of patients in the real-world expectation survey of Asia-Pacific patients for H. pylori eradication therapy,2 which showed 91% of accepted minimal eradication rate expected by H. pylori-infected patients. In the consensus report, clarithromycin triple therapy is recommended as first-line empirical treatment in areas of low clarithromycin resistance, and low clarithromycin resistance is defined as clarithromycin resistance rate

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Gennaio 2024