FRIDAY, March 15, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- Childhood bugs are nothing new, but now researchers say they often carry another germ that doesn't do its damage until adulthood: The ulcer bug.
A new study of Louisiana residents shows most people contract Helicobacter pylori by the time they're 10 years old. It also found the bacterium was much more prevalent in black children than in whites. The germs have been linked to gastric ulcers, ulcers elsewhere in the intestinal tract, and even stomach cancer and B-cell lymphomas.
Dr. Huda Malaty, a gut specialist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and lead author of the study, says the results send a signal to pediatricians to test and treat young children for the bacteria.
"If a child is sick with an upper [gastrointestinal] problem and goes to a physician, the physician should automatically test for H. pylori and treat it," Malaty says. The problem, however, is the germs are often silent, brewing mischief in the gut that doesn't show up for decades.
"There are so many infected children who have no symptoms, but then grow up to have ulcers or cancer," she says.
Researchers in the United States and Europe are now working on an H. pylori vaccine, Malaty adds, but that inoculation isn't ready. How the infection is passed is a matter of debate among doctors, though the oral-fecal route appears to be a major pathway.
The latest findings, which appear in tomorrow's issue of The Lancet, used data collected in the Bogalusa heart study, an ongoing research project begun in Bogalusa, La., in the early 1970s.
Malaty's group tracked H. pylori infection rates in 224 children who'd entered the study in 1975-1976. Of those, 99 were black and 125 were white; 110 were boys and 114 were girls.
At the start of the study, when the children were between 1 and 3 years of age, 8 percent tested positive for the stomach bacteria. The percentage of blacks with the germs outnumbered whites three to one (13 percent versus 4 percent), in keeping with earlier work from the researchers.
By the time the group reached early adulthood in the mid-1990s, nearly a quarter had contracted H. pylori, although the bulk of new cases had occurred early in life. The median age children tested positive for the bacteria was 7.5 years, which didn't vary by race. By adulthood, 43 percent of blacks had the infection, compared with just 8 percent of whites.
Of the 206 children who began the study without signs of H. pylori, 19 percent had the germs by their early 20s.
While H. pylori tends to stick around in those who catch it, some people do fight off the infection. In the Louisiana study, nine of the 58 subjects who tested positive for the germs later proved free of them.
What To Do
To find out more about H. pylori try the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
You can also try the American College of Gastroenterology or this Web site devoted to H. pylori.
