Gastric cancer is ranked fifth in cancer list and has the third highest mortality rate. Helicobacter pylori is a class I carcinogen and a predominant etiological factor of gastric cancer. H. pylori infection may induce carcinogenesis via epigenetic alterations in the promoter region of various genes. H. pylori is known to induce hypermethylation-silencing of several tumor suppressor genes in H. pylori-infected cancerous and H. pylori-infected non-cancerous gastric mucosae. This article presents a review of the published literature mainly from the last year 15 years. The topic focuses on H. pylori-induced DNA methylation linked to gastric cancer development. The authors have used MeSH terms "Helicobacter pylori" with "epigenetic," "DNA methylation," in combination with "gastric inflammation", gastritis" and "gastric cancer" to search SCOPUS, PubMed, Ovid, and Web of Science databases. The success of epigenetic drugs such as de-methylating agents in the treatment of certain cancers has led towards new prospects that similar approaches could also be applied against gastric cancer. However, it is very important to understand the role of all the genes that have already been linked to H. pylori-induced DNA methylation in order to in order to evaluate the potential benefits of epigenetic drugs.
Keywords: DNA methylation; Helicobacter pylori; epigenetics; gastric cancer.