Helicobacter Pylori : a Gastrointestinal revolution

Helicobacter pylori has come a long way, its controversy-ridden discovery having culminated in a rare gastrointestinal, nay medical revolution. The gastrointestinal tract itself doesn’t seem capable of much excitement beyond sheer gastronomic pleasure. The advent of Helicobacter pylori radically altered the landscape. The story of its discovery is one of serendipity, doggedness and perseverance; the quintessence of scientific simplicity. It is remarkable though, that an organism that colonizes about half of the world’s human guts, humanity’s most ubiquitous chronic bacterial pathogen, remained undiscovered until less than 25 years ago. This is a testimony to the ingenuity of this extraordinary bacterium. Gastric epithelial bacteria had been noted in the past, but repeated attempts to culture the spiral organisms from gastric biopsies had been unsuccessful. But from a long Easter weekend in 1983, the reading of culture plates was delayed and, for the first time, a profuse growth of the organism that is now known as Helicobacter pylori was cultured. Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, working in Western Australia, established the link between the organism, and gastritis, peptic ulcer disease and gastric cancer in 1983, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine, long after, in 2005.