Helicobacter pylori: Perturbation and restoration of gut microbiome

Alternate remedies with natural products provides unlimited opportunities for new drug development. These can be either as pure compounds or as standardized set of compounds. The phytochemicals and secondary metabolites are in great demand for screening bioactive compounds and plays an important role towards drug development. Natural products have many advantages over to synthetic chemical drugs. Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) a Gram-negative bacteria has been classified as Class I carcinogen by World Health Organization in 1994. Current treatment regimens for H. pylori is 'triple therapy' administrated for two weeks which includes a combination of two antibiotics like Amoxicillin and Clarithromycin and a proton pump inhibitor (PPI) like Lansoprazole, and for 'quadruple therapy' in addition to antibiotics and a PPI, Bismuth is used. Antibiotic resistance can be named as the main factor for failure of treatment of H. pylori infection. The need of the hour is to develop a herbal remedy that could combat the growth of H. pylori. Probiotics can also be used as 'feasible' tool for H. pylori infection management. Present review is an attempt to briefly discuss about the pathogenicity, genetic predisposition, perturbation of gut microbiota due to antibiotic treatment and restoration of healthy gut microbiota with phytochemicals and probiotics.