Studies over 5 decades have examined ABO blood groups and risk of pancreatic cancer in Western, Asian, and other populations, though no systematic review has been published. We studied data from 908 pancreatic cancer cases and 1,067 population controls collected during December 2006–January 2011 in urban Shanghai, China, and reviewed the literature for all studies of this association. Random-ef...

Helicobacter pylori is a gram-negative rod associated with gastroduodenal pathologies, such as gastritis, peptic ulcer, and gastric adenocarcinoma. Although most H. pylori infections are clinically silent, the organism is associated with substantial morbidity and mortality. It is unknown why the bacteria are able to produce severe disease in some hosts and be innocuous in others. Different viru...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Helicobacter pylori has been strongly associated with peptic ulcer diseases, chronic gastritis, ulcers, and reported as a risk factor for gastric cancer, too. The vaculating cytotoxin (vacA), the cytotoxin associated genes (cagA), the induced by contact with epithelium factor antigen (iceA gene), blood adhesion binding antigen (babA2), and outer membrane protein oipA h...

Helicobacter pylori is a gastric pathogen that infects half the human population and causes gastritis, ulcers, and cancer. The cagA gene product is a major virulence factor associated with gastric cancer. It is injected into epithelial cells, undergoes phosphorylation by host cell kinases, and perturbs host signaling pathways. CagA is known for its geographical, structural, and functional diver...

BACKGROUND Infection with Helicobacter pylori induces chronic gastritis in virtually all infected persons, and such gastritis has been associated with an increased risk of developing gastric cancer. This risk is further enhanced with cagA+ (positive for cytotoxin-associated gene A) H. pylori strains and may be a consequence of induced gastric cell proliferation and/or alteration in apoptosis (p...

Bacterial type IV secretion systems are macromolecule transporters with essential functions for horizontal gene transfer and for symbiotic and pathogenic interactions with eukaryotic host cells. Helicobacter pylori, the causative agent of type B gastritis, peptic ulcers, gastric adenocarcinoma, and mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT) lymphoma, uses the Cag type IV secretion system to injec...

BACKGROUND Helicobacter pylori is associated with chronic gastritis, peptic ulcers, and gastric cancer. The aim of this study was to assess the topographical distribution of H. pylori in the stomach as well as the vacA and cagA genotypes in patients with and without gastric cancer. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Three gastric biopsies, from predetermined regions, were evaluated in 16 patients...

AIMS To use a range of natural phenotypically variant strains of Helicobacter pylori with disparate CagA and VacA (vacuolating cytotoxin) expression to determine which bacterial factors are more closely associated with epithelial interleukin-8 (IL-8) induction. METHODS Gastric epithelial cells (AGS and KATO-3) were co-cultured with five H pylori strains which were variously shown to express t...

Mucosal and systemic immunologic recognition of cagA by Helicobacter pylori-infected individuals is associated with peptic ulcer disease; however, in the laboratory, expression of cagA is subject to artificial conditions which may not accurately reflect the conditions in host tissues. Gastric antral and body biopsy specimens and serum for anti-H. pylori immunoglobulin G serology were obtained f...