Evaluation of ELISA serology for the primary diagnosis of Helicobacter pylori infection in Turkish dyspeptic patients: a prospective study from a developing country

Abstract number: 1134_02_51

Kocazeybek B., Erzin Y., Altun S., Dobrucali A., Aslan M., Erdamar S., Dirican A.

Aim:

Hp is recognized as an important human pathogen by virtue of it's association with peptic ulcer disease, gastric cancer and gastric lymphoma and the high prevalence of infection worldwide. Both invasive and noninvasive tests are available to diagnose Hp infection but there is still no single gold standard. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of a commercially available anti-Hp IgG ELISA kit for the primary diagnosis of Hp infection.

Materials and methods:

A total of 185 patients who were referred to our endoscopy unit were included. According to our gold standard, a patient was classified as being Hp(+) if the culture and/or both histology, rapid urease test were positive and as Hp(-) only if all of these tests remained negative. Standard methods were used to calculate sensitivity, specificity, predictive values of positive and negative results and 95% confidence intervals of these values.

Results:

After excluding patients with discordant results131 of 152 patients (86%) were Hp (+). The sensitivity, specificity and diagnostic accuracy of the IgG-ELISA were 97%, 67%, 93% respectively.

Conclusion:

Due to it's lack for specificity, we conclude that quantitative anti-Hp ELISA test may not be a suitable alternative for primary diagnosis of Hp in our country, where the prevalence of infection is still very high.