The Absorption of Radioactive Vitamin B12 and the Secretion of Hydrochloric Acid in Patients with Atrophic Gastritis.

it is now well known that chronic atrophic gastritis may occur in patients who do not have Addisonian pernicious anaemia, and that the histological appearance of the gastric mucosa in patients with and without pernicious anaemia may be indistinguishable. In fact there is no pathognomonic histological gastric lesion in pernicious anaemia (Magnus, 1958; Williams, Coghill, and Edwards, 1958). Furthermore defective absorption of vitamin B12 has been found in some patients with atrophic gastritis when there was no overt haematological evidence of Addisonian pernicious anaemia (Badenoch, 1954; Callender and Denborough, 1957; Mollin, Booth, and Baker, 1957; Siurala and Nyberg, 1957; Glass, Speer, Nieburgs, Ishimori, Jones, Baker, Schwartz, and Smith, 1960). However, some of these patients were either suffering from early Addisonian pernicious anaemia or were from families of patients with pernicious anaemia (Callender and Denborough, 1957; Siurala and Nyberg, 1957). In them factors other than gastric atrophy may contribute to diminished ability to secrete intrinsic factor (McIntyre, Hahn, Conley, and Glass, 1959). During the course of an investigation into the histological appearances of the gastric mucosa, patients were found with atrophic gastritis unassociated with clinical or haematological evidence of