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Updated: Jul 1, 2025
Gastric Mucosa Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction Analysis for Detecting Helicobacter pylori and Antibiotic Resistance
Published on: March 7, 2025
Treatment failure of Helicobacter pylori in primary care: a retrospective cohort study
Gertrude van den Brink1, Lieke M Koggel2, Joris Jh Hendriks2
1Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Leiden University Medical Centre, Leiden, the Netherlands g.van_den_brink@lumc.nl.
Background:
Owing to increasing antibiotic resistance, the worldwide efficacy of Helicobacter pylori (HP) eradication treatment has decreased.
Aim:
To determine antimicrobial resistance of HP in primary care.
Design & Setting:
Retrospective cohort study using real-world routine healthcare data from 80 general practices in the Netherlands.
Method:
Patients with International Classification of Primary Care (ICPC) codes for gastric symptoms or Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) codes for acid inhibition in the period 2010-2020 were selected. Main outcomes were antimicrobial resistance of HP, defined as the prescription of a second eradication treatment within 12 months, and clinical remission of gastric symptoms, defined as no usage of acid inhibition 1 year following eradication therapy.
Results:
We identified 138 455 patients with gastric symptoms and/or acid inhibition use (mean age 57 years [standard deviation 18.2 years], 43% male). A total of 5224 (4%) patients received an HP eradication treatment. A second treatment was prescribed to 416 (8%) of those patients. From these, 380 patients received amoxicillin-clarithromycin, 16 amoxicillin-metronidazole, and 11 clarithromycin-metronidazole as first regimen and were considered antimicrobial resistant. We observed a 0.8% increment per year of patients requiring a second eradication treatment (P = 0.003, 95% confidence interval = 0.33 to 1.22). After successful eradication, 2329/4808 (48%) patients used acid inhibition compared with 355/416 (85%) patients following treatment failure (P<0.001).
Conclusion:
Antimicrobial treatment is not successful in almost one-tenth of HP infections in primary care after a first treatment containing clarithromycin and/or metronidazole. Although the treatment failure rate is not as high as reported in secondary care, the increasing trend is concerning and may require revision of the current guidelines.
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