Novel detection of Helicobacter pylori in fish: A possible public health concern

Helicobacter pylori is one of the most common human pathogens worldwide with serious clinical outcomes. Although, H. pylori is a major water-borne pathogen, its occurrence in fish is still unknown. This leads us to conduct the current study in order to clarify this point and to investigate the potential role of fish in the epidemiology of H. pylori. For this purpose, fecal samples were obtained from 315 fish from different species and were caught from various aquatic environments at different localities in Egypt. The obtained fecal samples were examined for the occurrence of H. pylori using monoclonal antibody based lateral flow immunoassay for antigen detection and after then the positive samples were confirmed by PCR. In addition, fecal samples from 18 fish handlers were also examined for the presence of H. pylori by lateral flow technique. The overall prevalence rates of H. pylori in the examined fish were 6.7% and 1.9% for LF and PCR, respectively, whereas 61.1% of fish handlers were positive. Only tilapia fish showed positive results by both techniques in rates 10.9% and 3.1%, respectively. Interestingly, H. pylori was detected in cultured and wild tilapia in various aquatic environments at different localities, whereas all other fish species were negative even those that were collected from the same water source where positive tilapia were caught. These results concluded that tilapia fish may be considered as a potential zoonotic reservoir for H. pylori and thus, H. pylori may become a new fish-borne pathogen. Further studies are needed to investigate the occurrence of H. pylori in other fish species.