Gastric cancer and gastrin: on the interaction of Helicobacter pylori gastritis and acid inhibitory induced hypergastrinemia

Gastric cancer, a disease with a reduced frequency for decades, now appears to be on the rise again in young Americans. The epidemiology of gastric cancer differs between tumors in the cardia and those of the more distal parts of the stomach. The tumors are divided into the intestinal type showing glandular growth pattern and the diffuse type with a different pattern. The latter often expresses neuroendocrine and more specifically ECL-cell markers suggesting that they originate from the ECL cell, the target cell for the antral hormone, gastrin. Helicobacter pylori gastritis is accepted as the major cause of gastric cancer, but only after having induced oxyntic atrophy which reduces gastric acid secretion and thus induces hypoacidity leading to hypergastrinemia. Long-term hypergastrinemia is known to induce malignant neoplasia in the stomach of animals as well as man. Recently treatment with proton pump inhibitor after Helicobacter pylori eradication in patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease, has been reported to predispose to gastric cancer. Since profound acid inhibition is a well-known cause of gastric neoplasia, it is to be expected that Helicobacter pylori infection and profound acid inhibition has an additive or possibly potentiating effect on the development of gastric cancer.