ABSTRACT

Helicobacter pylori is a spiral, gram negative bacterium and found to be associated with gastritis, peptic ulcer disease, gastric adenocarcinoma and MALT lymphoma. Thus there is an increasing importance of the treatment of Helicobacter pylori and thereby a great need for simple and accurate diagnostic methods. Helicobacter pylori infection can be diagnosed by invasive and non-invasive techniques. Invasive diagnostic methods require mucosal biopsy during endoscopy and then subjecting them to culture, rapid urease test, polymerase chain reaction or histologic analysis. Non-invasive methods include antibody detection (serology), stool antigen and urea breath tests.