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Normal Growth in Young Children with Helicobacter pylori Infection

2002; Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; Volume: 35; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1097/00005176-200207000-00024

1536-4801

Figen Özçay, Hülya Demır, Hasan Özen, Figen Gürakan, İnci Nur Saltık‐Temizel, Aysel Yüce, Nurten Koçak,

Gastroesophageal reflux and treatments

To the Editors: In their report, Richter et al. (1) investigated the influence of Helicobacter pylori infection on growth. They examined 3315 children aged 5 to 7 years by 13C-urea-breath test and recognized 118 boys (7.2%) and 95 girls (6.1%) as having Helicobacter pylori infection. According to their study, Helicobacter pylori-positive children were shorter than Helicobacter pylori-negative children. Although Helicobacter pylori-positive boys were 2.06 cm smaller than Helicobacter pylori-negative boys, the difference in girls was not significant. In terms of body weight, differences between the infected and noninfected children were not significant. Only boys with Helicobacter pylori infection had a lower body weight than noninfected boys. Authors have concluded that Helicobacter pylori infection in childhood has negative effect on growth. We investigated 49 children (mean age 71.9 ± 11.9 months, range 52 to 91 months, 26 boys) with abdominal pain for the presence of Helicobacter pylori infection. Twenty-seven children (mean age 75.6 ± 10.2 months, 17 boys) were diagnosed as Helicobacter pylori gastritis histologically. Twenty-two children (mean age 70.8 ± 13.8 month, 9 boys) were Helicobacter pylori-negative based on the results of histology and/or 13C-urea-breath test. Their height, weight, height standard deviation scores, and weight standard deviation scores were noted. We did not find any difference between Helicobacter pylori-infected and noninfected children with regard to height and body weight (116.1 ± 6.2 cm vs. 112.2 ± 7.9 cm and 21.3 ± 4.3 kg vs. 19.6 ± 3.1 kg). The difference between the mean values of height and weight standard deviation scores of Helicobacter pylori-positive and negative children were also not significant (−0.1254 ± 0.946 kg vs. −0.1655 ± 0.935 kg and −0.2659 ± 0.936 cm vs. −0.4583 ± 0.95 cm). Subnormal growth in Helicobacter pylori-infected children was reported before (2,3). Most of these studies included school-aged children or adolescents. Patel et al. (4) reported that whereas children 7 years of age were slightly shorter than their noninfected peers, at age 11 there was a greater difference in height between infected and noninfected children. We also detected subnormal growth in 36.7% of Helicobacter pylori-infected children with mean age of 11.5 ± 2 years (3). The possible underlying cause of diminished growth in these children may be related with chronic persistent gastric inflammation, dyspepsia, and decreased nutritional intake. The duration of chronic inflammation may be related with the degree of growth retardation, the younger the patient, the less effected the growth. Figen Özçay Hülya Demir Hasan Özen Figen Gürakan Inci Nur Saltik Aysel Yüce Nurten Koçak