Abstract
BACKGROUND: Helicobacter pylori infection is the most well-known risk factor for gastric mucosa abnormalities. However, some geographic regions with persistent high H. pylori infection rates do not suffer from high gastric mucosa lesions incidence. The aim of the study was to establish the relationship between H. pylori infection and gastric pathological features in Cameroon. METHODS: We performed a retrospective study, collecting data from the University Teaching Hospital and the Cameroon Pasteur institute on 1290 patients (mean age 46.31 ± 16.45 years, sex ratio 1.19:1) for whom histological features of the gastric mucosa and H. pylori infection were investigated from 2014 to 2019. Data were extracted from the medical records; hospital computerized databases; or clinical charts of these patients and reviewed according to gender and age of participants. The study was approved by the Ethical Committee of Medical Sciences. RESULT: Approximately 3% (2.56%) of the sample population were with normal gastric mucosa whereas chronic gastritis, atrophic gastritis, intestinal metaplasia, dysplasia, carcinoma, hyperplastic polyps and MALT lymphoma was found in 75.35, 8.2, 7.7, 2.8, 9.3, 1.55 and 0.8% of cases respectively. Unlike hyperplasia (OR= 0.3838), infected participants were in a high risk to develop gastric lesions with an odds ratio of 1.1775, 1.4866, 1.4415, 1.2088, 0.9408 and 0.9075 for gastritis, atrophic gastric, dysplasia, carcinoma, intestinal metaplasia and MALT lymphoma respectively. CONCLUSION: our finding showed that chronic gastritis, gastric premalignancies and malignancies are positively link to Helicobacter pylori infection and that hyperplastic polyp is inversely associated with H. pylori infection in our milieu.