NODULAR GASTRITIS WITH HELICOBACTER PYLORI INFECTION IS STRONGLY ASSOCIATED WITH DIFFUSE‐TYPE GASTRIC CANCER IN YOUNG PATIENTS

Abstract

Background: Nodular gastritis (NG), a particular type of gastritis, is now defined as antral nodularity. Recent studies have shown that NG is strongly associated with Helicobacter pylori infection, and we recently showed that it may be associated with diffuse‐type gastric cancer of the corpus. We retrospectively investigated the relation between NG and gastric cancer in patients aged 29 years or less.Patients and Methods: The study group comprised 150 patients (48 males, 102 females; mean age, 27.7 years) who were endoscopically diagnosed with NG and were less than 29 years of age; 3939 sex‐ and age‐matched patients without NG who were H. pylori‐positive served as the control group (1184 males, 2755 females; mean age, 27.5 years). We estimated the risk of gastric cancer development in patients with NG relative to that of patients without NG.Results: The prevalence of gastric cancer was significantly higher in patients with NG than in the control patients (7/150; 4.7% vs 3/3939; 0.08%, P < 0.001). The odds ratio for the risk of gastric cancer in patients with NG was found to be 64.2 (95% confidence interval; 16.4–250.9). The seven cases of gastric cancer with NG showed the same characteristics: all were diagnosed histologically as the diffuse type and were located in the corpus with H. pylori infection.Conclusion: NG with H. pylori infection is strongly associated with diffuse‐type gastric cancer of the corpus in young patients.