Identification of enterohepatic Helicobacter species in patients suffering from inflammatory bowel disease

Abstract

Using a group-specific PCR assay, we investigated the presence of enterohepatic Helicobacter species in gut specimens from patients with inflammatory bowel disease. Enterohepatic Helicobacter species were detected in 12% (3 of 25) of the patients with Crohn's disease, in 17% (3 of 18) of the ulcerative colitis samples, and in 4% (1 of 23) of the controls.

FIG. 1.

Phylogenetic tree based on the evolutionary distance of the detected 16S rRNA sequences and Helicobacter reference strains. The scale bar is equal to 1 substitution per 100 residues, as determined by measuring the lengths of the horizontal lines connecting two species. Subjects are represented by bold letters that represent the diagnosis of Crohn's disease (CD), ulcerative colitis (UC), or control status (CON) and the patient code. A number after a dash indicates that several sequences were obtained from a single patient. The code in brackets after the names of the reference strains indicates the GenBank accession number of the corresponding 16S rRNA sequence.

FIG. 2.

Prevalence of H. pylori and enterohepatic Helicobacter species in Crohn's disease (CD) patients, ulcerative colitis (UC) patients, controls (CON), and both types of IBD patients combined (IBD). The error bars indicate the 95% confidence interval.