Helicobacter pylori stool antigen test

Objective :Helicobacter pylori (H.pylori) infection is usually acquired in early childhood. Invasive techniques used for diagnosis ofH.pylori infection require endoscopic examination which is expensive and inconvenient and may cause complications. the aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of a new noninvasive diagnostic method, stool antigen test forH.pylori in untreated children with recurrent abdominal pain.Methods: Eighty children (35 female, 45 male) who have undergone upper gastrointestinal endoscopy due to recurrent abdominal pain were included in the study. theH.pylori stool antigen test (HpSA) is based on a sandwich enzyme immunoassay with antigen detection. HpSA sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values were determined with reference to the results of both histology and rapid urease test as a gold standard (H. pylori status).Results: While 49 of the 80 children (61%) tested were positive forH.pylori according to the results of both histology and rapid urease test, 28 children had negativeH.pylori status. Among those 49 children, 48 were found to be positive by HpSA. Of 28 patients with negativeH.pylori status, 28 were H.py/ori-negative also in the stool test. the sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values of HpSA were found to be 98%, 100%, 100%, and 96.5%, respectively.Conclusion: these findings have demonstrated that HpSA as a relatively simple, inexpensive and time saving noninvasive test is a reliable method for detection ofH.pylori infections in children.