Novel intervention strategies for Helicobacter pylori treatment

Helicobacter pylori infects the gastric mucosa of almost half of the worlds population and infection is associated with several gastrointestinal diseases, ranging in severity from superficial and chronic gastritis to duodenal ulceration and gastric adenocarcinoma. Developing new therapeutics against a bacterium with such a unique niche has proven challenging, and the current therapy is complex and increase of bacterial resistance to current antimicrobials and treatment failure has identified a need for newer, more potent compounds. Access to the genomic sequence of several H. pylori isolates has allowed a more focused, target-specific approach to the development of new therapeutics.