Can Drinking Water Serve as a Potential Reservoir of Helicobacter pylori? Evidence for Water Contamination by Helicobacter pylori

Although the natural niche for H. pylori is the human stomach, for widespread infection to occur the organism may need to survive in the external environment [1]. Documented evidence relating to the survival of H.pylori outside the gastric niche is extremely limited. However, there are no established culture methods for the detection of viable H. pylori in the environment, in particular drinking water supplies, preventing the development of true epidemiological and risk assessments [2]. A number of drinking water studies have identified H. pylori in water preand post-chlorination [3]. Baker and colleague [4] found that H. pylori were more resistant to low levels of free chlorine than E. coli or C. jejuni. Moreno and colleagues [5] have shown that H. pylori could survive disinfection procedures that are normally used in drinking water treatment when bacterium H. pylori was found in the viable but not-culturable (VBNC) state. However, they did find that culture of H. pylori was lost after 5 min in water despite free chlorine levels of 0.96 mg/2l of water. Children born into high-income families supplied with municipal water are considered 12 times more likely to become colonized with H. pylori than those supplied from community wells. This suggests that municipal water is a possible risk factor in the transmission and acquisition of H. pylori. It is plausible to suggest that breaks in municipal pipes allow for infiltration of contaminated surface water [6].