Source: DGNews  |  Posted 8 years ago

By Maggie Schwarz

BALTIMORE, MD -- October 20, 2003 -- Nine patients whose Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection was resistant to antibiotics were successfully treated by visible blue-light laser, it was reported here at the 68th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology.

Robert A. Ganz, MD, Abbott-Northwestern Hospital, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States and colleagues, said that H. pylori infection is a major cause of ulcers and gastric cancer. The problem of antibiotic resistance has sparked a search for novel ways to kill H. pylori bacteria.

Dr. Ganz's group has previously shown that the blue-violet laser kills H. pylori in vitro. In this study, the 9 participating patients had dyspepsia and proven H. pylori infection. The investigators delivered the blue-violet laser light to a site in the pre-pyloric antrum over a period of 4.5 minutes. An adjacent site was left untreated as a matched control. Biopsies were taken for each site for culturing and histological analysis.

H. pylori was killed by the laser in over 90% of bacteria in this study. Some patients had bacterial killing approaching 99%. The 400