Short stature and Helicobacter pylori infection in Italian children: prospective multicentre hospital based case-control study

Members of the study group are listed at the end of the article Helicobacter pylori is mainly acquired in childhood,1 but the diseases associated with such infection remain unknown. Scottish and Italian schoolchildren infected with H pylori showed reduced growth in height, 2 3 and H pylori gastritis was found in 55% of French children examined for short stature.4 To evaluate the role of H pylori and socioeconomic factors on growth we compared children with idiopathic short stature with those of normal height. This study was approved by and conducted within the guidelines of the gastric disease section of the Italian Society for Paediatric Gastroenterology and Hepatology (SIGEP). Between April 1996 and March 1997 we recruited 134 consecutive children aged 5-13 years (median 9.8 years) whose height was below the third centile—that is, two standard deviations below the mean height of their peers—from 26 paediatric gastroenterology and endocrinology units in Italy. We individually matched them with children of the same age and sex from the same region whose height was above the 25th centile and who had been referred …