Introduction: Responsible for one the most frequent infections worldwide, Helicobacter pylori is involved in the pathogenesis of acute/chronic gastritis, peptic ulcer and gastric cancer. It has been suggested that patients infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) register a lower frequency of Helicobacter pylori infection, due to extensive use of antibiotics for opportunistic infections.
Purpose: a comparison between the frequency of Helicobacter pylori infection in HIV-positive and HIV-negative patients, noting the differences between diagnostic methods.
Material and method: We performed a retrospective, analytical, case-control study, over a period of 40 months, by analyzing 1165 Helicobacter pylori tests (serology or stool antigen) performed in the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases from Clinical District Hospital Mures. Group A included 94 HIV-infected patients, while group B – 1071 non-HIV infected patients. Statistical analysis was performed (Chi2 test, Odds Ratio (OR) calculation) with the help of GraphPad programme.
Results: 45.74% HIV-infected patients and 62.5% HIV-negative subjects had positive Helicobacter pylori tests (either serology or stool antigen), which resulted in a statistically significant negative association between HIV and Helicobacter pylori infection, with p=0.0013 < α=0.05 and OR=0.5046. However, only 8.33% stool antigen tests in HIV-positive and 6.78% in HIV-negative patients were positive for Helicobacter pylori, while 51.21% serological tests were positive in HIV-infected subjects and 69.46% in HIV-negative patients.
Conclusions: Although HIV infection seems to be associated with less Helicobacter pylori positive tests, the clinician needs to consider the existing differences between diagnostic methods.