STUDY FINDS BACTERIAL CAUSE OF ULCERS

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, February 4, 1993                   TAG: 9302040035
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BOSTON                                LENGTH: Short
STUDY FINDS BACTERIAL CAUSE OF ULCERS
A new study provides some of the strongest evidence yet that bacterial infections are a major cause of recurring digestive ulcers.
Austrian doctors studied 104 people who were infected with a germ called H. pylori and had suffered at least two recurrences of duodenal ulcers. They were randomly assigned to take ranitidine, a common ulcer medicine, or ranitidine plus antibiotics.
Ulcers initially healed in 92 percent of those who got antibiotics and 75 percent of those who did not. After one year, the ulcers had come back in 8 percent of the antibiotic patients and 86 percent of those in the comparison group.
In an accompanying editorial in today's New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. David Y. Graham of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston said that wiping out the germ changes the natural history of ulcers. "The disease is cured, and the risk of recurrence is virtually eliminated," he wrote.
- Associated Press

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB