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Review
. 2018 Apr 3:9:609.
doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2018.00609. eCollection 2018.

Helicobacter pylori the Latent Human Pathogen or an Ancestral Commensal Organism

Jackie Li  1 , Guillermo I Perez-Perez  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Helicobacter pylori the Latent Human Pathogen or an Ancestral Commensal Organism

Jackie Li et al. Front Microbiol. .

Abstract

We dedicated this review to discuss Helicobacter pylori as one of the latest identified bacterial pathogens in humans and whether its role is mainly as a pathogen or a commensal. Diseases associated with this bacterium were highly prevalent during the 19th century and gradually have declined. Most diseases associated with H. pylori occurred in individuals older than 40 years of age. However, acquisition of H. pylori occurs mainly in young children inside the family setting. Prevalence and incidence of H. pylori has had a dramatic change in the last part of the 20th century and beginning of the 21th century. In developed countries there is a clear interruption of transmission and the lowest prevalence is observed in children younger than 10 years in these countries. A similar decline is observed but not at the same level in developing countries. Here we discuss the impact of the presence or absence of H. pylori in the health status of humans. We also discuss whether it is necessary or not to establish H. pylori eradication programs on light of the current decline in H. pylori prevalence.

Keywords: H. pylori; commensal; gastric cancer; microbiome; pathogen; peptic ulcer.

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Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Decline in H. pylori prevalence observed in two population studies NHANES III Phase I (1988–1991) (○) and NHANES IV 1999–2000 (□), according to age and gender (blue-women and red-men) in the US (Chen and Blaser, 2008).
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Current trends in esophageal diseases in relation to the gradual decline in H. pylori colonization specific for Caucasian populations in developed countries (Hunt and Yaghoobi, 2017).
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Gradual decline in gastric and duodenal ulcer diseases associated to H. pylori infection in Caucasian and non-Caucasian men using the US Department of Veterans Affairs database from 1970 to 1995, prevalence shown as the proportional rate per 10,000 hospitalizations and the Vital Statistics of the United States obtained by the National Center of Health Statistics (NCHS) (El-Serag and Sonnenberg, 1998).
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Obesity prevalence according to ethnicity in the US in 2015. Modified from reference 35.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Tendency of human mortality rates associated with infectious diseases and non-infectious diseases in the US during the 20th century (Armstrong et al., 1999).
FIGURE 6
FIGURE 6
Model of the biphasic nature of H. pylori interaction with humans (Atherton and Blaser, 2009).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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