Despite some advances in the oncological managament, pancreatic cancer remains a clinical problem and has remained leading cause of cancer deaths. The association between Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection and pancreatic was suggested, but the issue remains of contentious. The aim of the study was to determine the relationship between H. pylori infection and pancreatic cancer development on a sample of Polish population.
Material and methods: 139 patients with pancreatic cancer and 177 controls were included in the study. Seropositivity for H. pylori, including CagA protein were assessed by the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and Western blot, respectively. The frequency of H. pylori in pancreatic cancer patients and controls were compared adjusted for age, sex, cigarette smoking and a family history of cancer in the logistic regresion model.
Results: No significant differences between pancreatic cancer patients and controls were seen according to H. pylori seropositivity (87.1 vs 82.5%; OR = 1.27; CI95%: 0.64-2.61; p = 0.514) and CagA seropositivity (83.5 vs 84.9%; OR = 0.90; CI95%: 0.46-1.73; p = 0.744).
Conclusions: The study didn't support previous observations of H. pylori infection as a plausible pathogenic risk factor for pancreatic cancer development. The high prevalence of infection in the control group may explain why the earlier reports of a positive association between H. pylori infection and pancreatic cancer could not be confirmed in the study.