ABSTRACT
Objective To investigate the impact and clinical significance of helicobacter pylori (Hp) elimination on ghrelin. Methods Forty patients with chronic superficial gastritis (CSG), 42 patients with chronic atrophic gastritis (CAG), 41 patients with peptic ulcer (PU) and 17 patients with gastric adenocarcinoma (CA) were included in this study. All of pa-tients in four groups were Hp-positive. Forty patients with Hp-negative were used as control. The Hp elimination were only performed in CAG,CSG and PU groups. The serum ghrelin and pepsinogen (PG) levels before and after Hp elimination were detected with ELISA assay in CSG, CAG and PU groups. The correlation between PG and glrelin was also detected. The ex-pression of ghrelin in gastric mucosa was detected by RT-PCR. Results Comparing with control group (30.41 ± 8.97), the ghrelin level was increased in PU group (35.42±9.87), but which were decreased in CAG group (18.59±8.19) and CA group (18.33±6.88). There was no significant difference in ghrelin level between CSG group (26.08±9.14) and control group. After Hp elimination, the serum and gastric mucosa ghrelin levels were significantly increased in CSG group (P＜0.01), but both serum and gastric mucosa ghrelin levels were significantly decreased in PU group (P＜0.01). And no significant difference in the level of ghrelin after Hp elimination in CAG group (P>0.05). A positive correlation was found between serum PGⅠ/PGⅡand serum ghrelin level in CSG, CAG and CA groups (r=0.668,P＜0.01). Conclusion Hp elimination has an impact on ghrelin level in patients with upper gastrointestinal diseases. The changes of ghrelin level related to PGⅠ/PGⅡ. Ghrelin can be used as one of the indexes of diagnostic and prognostic evaluation in Hp related upper gastrointestinal diseases.