New Approaches in Gastritis Treatment

Gastritis is an inflammation of the stomach lining, which is fairly common and could have different causes. Many kind of agents may lead the stomach into an inflamed statement; in first place, it could be due to non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID) such as aspirin, ibuprofen, naproxen, etc. (Fig. 1), which are used in different treatments to calm down some specific illness, e.g. rheumatoid arthritis; in second place, inflamation could be due to abrasive compounds (alcohol, acids and others) or unbalanced diets where the stomach is damaged by its own gastric acid; in third place, long-term physical and/or mental stress that result in the production of excessive amounts of stomach acid; in last place, the infection caused by a well-known microorganism, Helicobacter (H) pylori. When stomach inflammation is not treated, mainly in the latter case, the illness could end in a gastric ulcer or in the worst case, in gastric cancer. The signs and symptoms of gastritis depend on how long the problem has existed. If it occurs suddenly is called acute gastritis. In acute phase, superficial inflammation of the stomach causes the classic nausea and pain or discomfort in the upper abdomen. If it develops gradually is called chronic gastritis, and the symptoms might vary from those of acute, with a dull pain in the upper abdomen and a feeling of fullness and loss of appetite after a few bites of food. However, in some cases, people with chronic gastritis could not feel any of these symptoms. Another type is the reactive or chemical gastritis, which is defined as a foveolar elongation, tortuosity, and hypercellularity of the gastric surface epithelium, together with edema, vasodilatation, congestion of gastric lamina propria, and a paucity of inflammatory cells. This type of gastritis has been thought to result from duodenogastric bile reflux or the use of NSAIDs (Voutilainen et. al., 2002). Clinicians differ on classification of the less common and specific forms of gastritis, particularly since there are so much overlap with H. pylori in development of chronic gastritis and its complications. Other types of gastritis that may be diagnosed include: a) Acute stress gastritis, the most serious form of gastritis which usually occurs in critical ill patients, such as those in intensive care, where stress erosions may develop suddenly as a result of severe trauma or stress to the stomach lining; b) Atrophic gastritis, resulting from chronic gastritis which is leading to atrophy, or decrease in size and wasting away of the gastric lining. Gastric atrophy is the final stage of chronic gastritis and may be a precursor of gastric cancer; c) Superficial gastritis is a term often used to describe the initial stages of chronic gastritis; d) Uncommon specific forms of gastritis include granulomatous, eosiniphilic and lymphocytic gastritis (Sipponen & Price, 2011).