According to a new study at the New York University School of Medicine, an active strain of gut bacterium namely Helicobacter Pylori, may protect from stroke and some cancers, reports Medical Xpress.
The data used in the study is based on a national health survey including more than 10,000 individuals in a period of around 12 years, which shows that individuals with active strain of H. pylori had a reduced risk of death from strokes and cancers. H. pylori existence reduced the risk of death from stroke by 55 percent compared with those not infected with H. pylori, and 45 percent reduced risk of death from lung cancer, the study suggests.
Despite the previous findings have shown H. pylori linked to gastric diseases and stomach cancers, scientists showed that H. pylori can protect against child asthma.
The study was surfaced after an analysis by Yu Chen, PhD, MPH, associate professor of population health and environmental medicine, and Martin J. Blaser, MD, professor of internal medicine and professor of microbiology, in order to analyze health and nutrition statuses of individuals in the United States.
"The significance of this study is that this is a prospective cohort of participants representative of the U.S. population with a long follow-up," said Dr. Chen, according to Medical Xpress. "We studied both the overall H. pylori as well as cagA strain of H. pylori, which is more interactive with the human body. We found that H. pylori is not related to the risk of death from all causes, despite it being related to increased risk of death from gastric cancer.
"This finding confirms earlier work, however, that gastric cancers are now uncommon in the United States," he said. "We also found that H. pylori was related to a reduced risk of stroke and lung cancer, and these effects were stronger for the cagA strain, suggesting its mixed role in human health."
Researchers studied the data from the National Health and Nutrition Surveys which included 9,895 participants enrolled from 1988 to 1994. This data helped the researchers better understand the link between H. pylori and death rates. Among all the participants, 7,384 participants were H. pylori and cagA positive and these participants were tracked till 2000. As a result, participants with H. pylori were 40 times at a higher risk of death from gastric cancer.
It further showed that participants with cagA-positivity had a 55 percent reduced risk of death from stroke and 45 percent reduced risk of death from lung cancer when compared with their counterparts who were H. pylori and cagA negative.
"The most interesting finding was that there is a strong inverse association with stroke which could be protective," Dr. Blaser said. "There is some precedent for this and it is possible that the same cells (T reg cells) that H. pylori induces that protect against childhood asthma could be the protective agents, however, the findings need to be confirmed."
The study findings are published in an online journal GUT.
