LETTER

H pylori negative MALT lymphoma patients successfully treated with antibiotics: doubts about their H pylori negativity

E Lahner, M Milione, G Delle Fave, B Annibale

Department of Digestive and Liver Disease, University "La Sapienza", II Medical School, Ospedale Sant’Andrea, Rome

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr B Annibale
Department of Digestive and Liver Disease, University "La Sapienza", Ospedale Sant’Andrea, Via di Grottarossa 1035, 00189, Roma, Italy; bruno.annibale@uniroma1.it

Keywords: Helicobacter pylori; MALT lymphoma; antibiotics

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

We read with interest the report by Raderer and colleagues (Gut 2006;55:616–18). The authors reported on six patients with localised gastric Helicobacter pylori negative mucosa associated lymphoid tissue (MALT) lymphoma, successfully treated with eradication therapy. They suggest that patients with early stage H pylori negative gastric MALT lymphoma might benefit from antibiotics as the sole treatment modality and, as explanation for their findings, they propose the hypothesis of a role in gastric MALT lymphoma of bacteria other than H pylori and potential immunomodulatory effects of antibiotics.

We are surprised that the authors did not consider the possibility of false negative diagnostic tests for H pylori. As no single test is accepted as the gold standard for diagnosis of H pylori infection,^1,2 they correctly used more than one: histology, urea breath test, stool antigen test, and serology. However, none of these tests has a sensitivity of . . . [Full text of this article]

M Raderer

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr M Raderer
Department of Internal Medicine I, Division of Oncology, Waehringer Guertel 18–20, A-1090 Vienna, Austria; markus.raderer@meduniwien.ac.at

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