Editor,—I read the article on the comparison of serum, salivary, and rapid whole blood diagnostic tests forHelicobacter pylori and their validation against endoscopy based tests, by Reilly et al (Gut1997;40:454–8) with considerable interest because, in addition to other comments, they would not recommend the routine use of salivary antibodies as a method of choosing appropriate endoscopy inH pylori positive patients being considered for this test.

Our results on patients with peptic ulcer, published in 1996,1 suggest that saliva urease testing seems to be the preferred method for screening purposes and for following the effectiveness of eradication therapy for H pyloriinfection. Indeed, we followed two groups of patients with peptic ulcer treated for H pylori infection to see, mainly, whether monitoring treatment by the non-endoscopic means of a urease test and serology was informative. All patients were treated with amoxycillin and lansoprazole and followed mainly using the saliva urease test (CLO, Delta West) and serology (IgG anti- …