Detection of the Helicobacter pylori dupA gene is strongly affected by the PCR design

The Helicobacter pylori virulence gene dupA is usually detected by PCR, but the primer binding sites used are highly variable. Our newly designed qPCR against a conserved region of dupA was positive in 64.2% of 394 clinical isolates while the positivity rate of the commonly used PCRs ranged from 29.9% to 37.8%.