What Bizzozero never could imagine - Helicobacter pylori today and tomorrow.

With the observation of spiral organism in the stomach about one hundred years ago a long history of a bacterium started ending up in a worldwide research programs, studies and consensuses. With this bacterium rediscovered by Marshall and Warren and later named Helicobacter pylori, a milestone of research was laid nearly twenty years ago. Helicobacter pylori is now recognized as the main cause of most cases of gastritis and ulcer disease in the stomach and the duodenum. In the course of the Helicobacter pylori research, Helicobacter pylori was found to trigger neoplastic alterations on the ground of the inflammation in the stomach. At first, a large number of publications served to describe the connection between Helicobacter pylori and the low malignant B-cell lymphoma of the mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT) of the stomach. Furthermore, on the basis of numerous seroepidemiological studies, researchers succeeded in documenting the participation of H. pylori, at least as a co-factor, in the development of gastric carcinoma. From large epidemiological studies made during the last twenty years as well as from microbiological research we have learned much more about this in the beginning nameless and mysterious bacterium.