my personal edition > h. pylori/ulcer > news


  E-Mail this DGDispatch to a colleague

DGDispatch

Endoscope-Delivered Laser Kills Helicobacter Pylori: Presented at ACG

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 68^th 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 ± 25 nm dose of blue-violet light proved to be safe to human tissue.

Dr. Ganz's group is now pursuing a study of the whole stomach in 60 patients. The group is determining optimum methods to deliver effective wavelengths and fluences of light into the human stomach.

Dr. Ganz likened the effect to that of phototherapy for acne. In both acne and H. pylori, porphyrin, a naturally occurring chemical in the bacteria, is activated by blue-violet light, and that chemical kills the offending bacteria.


[Study Title: Helicobacter Pylori in Patients Is Killed By Visible Light. Abstract 14]

E-Mail this DGDispatch to a colleague

To print, use this version