AB-Yogurt helps!! ....Treatment Options - H.Pylori eradication

Helicobacter pylori eradication protocols is a standard name for all treatment protocols for peptic ulcers and gastritis; the primary goal is not only temporary relief of symptoms, but total elimination of Helicobacter pylori infection.

Definition

A good, clinically useful H. pylori eradication protocol is a treatment protocol, which ensures at least 80% H. pylori eradication rate, is not longer than 14 days (preferably 7 or 10 days) and is not too toxic (side effects should occur in not more than 10–15% patients receiving treatment by this protocol, and should not be so severe to warrant treatment discontinuation).

The treatment regimen should also be easy to follow by the patient, both human and canine, to improve or maintain high rate of treatment compliance.

During last decades, several new eradication protocols have been developed. This allowed clinicians to target several goals:

• improved treatment compliance;
• sharpened dietary component
• no need to strictly follow a diet, due to new proton pump inhibitor efficacy;
• decreased duration of therapy: from 14 to 7–10 days;
• decreased number of different tablets to ingest, due to combined standard preparations;
• decreased number of daily tablets from 4 times a day to twice-daily schemes;
• lessened toxicity and probability of side effects;
• improved clinical efficacy in terms of H. pylori eradication ratios;
• overcoming the problem of antibiotic resistance;
• satisfied the need for alternative protocols for those patients who are allergic to one of the standard antibiotics used in standard protocols.

Molecular model of H. pylori urease enzyme 

The standard first-line therapy is a one week "triple therapy" consisting of proton pump inhibitors such as omeprazole,lansoprazole and the antibiotics clarithromycin and amoxicillin. 

Variations of the triple therapy have been developed over the years, such as using a different proton pump inhibitor, as with pantoprazole or rabeprazole, or replacing amoxicillin with metronidazole for people who are allergic to penicillin. 

Such a therapy has revolutionized the treatment of peptic ulcers, and has made a cure to the disease possible; previously, the only option was symptom control using antacids, H₂-antagonists or proton pump inhibitors alone.

An increasing number of infected individuals are found to harbour antibiotic-resistant bacteria. This results in initial treatment failure and requires additional rounds of antibiotic therapy or alternative strategies, such as a quadruple therapy, which adds a bismuth colloid, such as bismuth subsalicylate.

 For the treatment of clarithromycin-resistant strains of H. pylori, the use of levofloxacin as part of the therapy has been suggested

An article in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found evidence that "ingesting lactic acid bacteria exerts a suppressive effect on Helicobacter pylori infection in both animals and humans," noting that "supplementing with Lactobacillus- and Bifidobacterium-containing yogurt (AB-yogurt) was shown to improve the rates of eradication of H. pylori in humans