Defining the role of sequential therapy for H pylori infection

摘要

Antibiotic treatment to eradicate chronic Helicobacter pylori infection has become the mainstay of treatment for peptic ulcer disease, and reports indicate that H pylori eradication might also prevent gastric cancer. The relative effectiveness of different eradication regimens varies between geographical regions, however, and the determination of whether one regimen will perform betterthan another in a particular population has seemed to require comparative clinical trials. In The Lancet, Jyh-Ming Liou and colleagues3 report findings that lend support to the idea that the best eradication regimen can be reliably predicted if the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant H pylori in the region is known, as has been previously suggested.