Helicobacter Forums

Hello everyone, I'm very glad to have found a community that can help each other with HP and its various complications.

For me personally, I've been struggling with mild chronic gastritis caused by HP since October, which has since been eradicated. However, the gastritis itself still feels like it's there. Even when I'm on high-dose PPI for months now, that burning sensation below my sternum can still be felt sometimes. I also got bad GERD symptoms, some of which have gone away with the PPI.

Come to find out recently, I'm also Vitamin D Deficient(11 ng/ml, borderline severe), which has been causing me a bunch of other symptoms. I know a part of it has to do with Covid-era environment and not being out in the sun much these days. But part of me wonders, could this possibly relate to the gastritis? I can't help but think of a cause-and-effect relationship here in a sense. Like could the gastritis have led to this Vitamin D deficiency(my diet has changed since the gastritis diagnosis but I still consume Vitamin D food such as eggs and fish), or am I healing slowly even after getting rid of HP because of the low Vitamin D levels?

If anyone has a good idea about how these two conditions relate to one another, I would greatly appreciate hearing your thoughts

how did you confirm the H. pylori eradication?

H. pylori is less likely to cause vit D deficiency. However, not much study has been done on this.

I confirmed it through a breath test. That was after I did the treatment of two doses of PPI and two antibiotics a day for two weeks. After that, I was supposed to keep on the PPI for 2 more months before confirming eradication, but I felt like if it wasn't eradicated then I was just wasting my time. So I talked to my doctor and I stopped the PPI for two weeks before getting tested. H Pylori was negative. The only real noticeable difference since then was my stools have become way more normal, I used to think I had IBS.

I guess I'm more concerned about the Vitamin D deficiency interfering with my stomach recovering from the effects of H Pylori, specifically the gastritis/erythema that was diagnosed, because I know Vitamin D is anti-inflammatory and is very crucial to a healthy immune system and recovery. I know I've been healing much slower than expected from a fungal skin infection too, which I now think is mainly due to not having enough Vitamin D in my blood, so could the same thing be happening in my stomach?

I am less familiar with the correlation of Vitamin D and H. pylori.
After doing some quick search, it seems like Vit D is helping the clearing of H. pylori. But I am not sure the mechanism behind.

Kanz1 wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 26, 2021 6:33 pm

I confirmed it through a breath test. That was after I did the treatment of two doses of PPI and two antibiotics a day for two weeks. After that, I was supposed to keep on the PPI for 2 more months before confirming eradication, but I felt like if it wasn't eradicated then I was just wasting my time. So I talked to my doctor and I stopped the PPI for two weeks before getting tested. H Pylori was negative. The only real noticeable difference since then was my stools have become way more normal, I used to think I had IBS.

I guess I'm more concerned about the Vitamin D deficiency interfering with my stomach recovering from the effects of H Pylori, specifically the gastritis/erythema that was diagnosed, because I know Vitamin D is anti-inflammatory and is very crucial to a healthy immune system and recovery. I know I've been healing much slower than expected from a fungal skin infection too, which I now think is mainly due to not having enough Vitamin D in my blood, so could the same thing be happening in my stomach?

Hi Kanz1,
I had similar issue. My biopsy result came negative for H pylori and I was on PPI for 2 months. I was having joint pains, back pain, soft stools and dark yellow urine. Doctor checked calcium, phosporus serum and Vitamin D. The first two results came normal, however Vitamin D results were very low ~25nmol/L. Since then I started supplements 50Kiu a week. My joint pains subsided, however I still have issue with soft stools and in past few days the frequency increased to 3-4 soft stools a day.
Can it be after affects of H-Pylori? or some other underlying cause?

H. pylori has more to do with upper gastric problems. However, the inflammation caused may go to other organs via blood supply. I dont think H. pylori has direct causation to loose stool. But will inflammation lead to microbiome change and then loose stool? maybe.

Helico_expert wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 03, 2021 1:45 pm

H. pylori has more to do with upper gastric problems. However, the inflammation caused may go to other organs via blood supply. I dont think H. pylori has direct causation to loose stool. But will inflammation lead to microbiome change and then loose stool? maybe.

Thanks Helico Expert.
What do you suggest in my case? My doctor said that there was reddness and inflammation in the stomach when he performed the endoscopy (in Dec'20)
How do I reduce the inflammation?

I assume your gastroenterologist understand H. pylori and your result is not false negative.

In some rare cases, we do come across people with gastric inflammation without H. pylori. We still dont understand why causes the inflammation. To date, only H. pylori is known to cause infection in the stomach.

It is also possible that after H. pylori eradication, your immune cells remain active in the stomach and continuously causing the inflammation. There is no cure for this. You just have to wait till they go away. If you are free of H. pylori, the inflammation will eventually go away.

Thanks Helico Expert.

One update - I checked with my another Gastro doctor about the soft stools (3-4 times a day) and bright yellow urine.
He suggested that I do a breath test to confirm that H-pylori is eliminated, range of other stool test and Complete Blood profile and gave me the below medications:
1. Mebeverine Hydrochloride 200mg
2. Rifaximin 200mg
3. Pro Biolyte
4. Simethicone pastilles 105.8mg

The results came and I tested positive for H-Pylori 697 DPM, Stool & Blood and urine tests came normal.
He said that this number for H-Pylori is very small and since I dont have major upper GI related issues, he asked me to continue with the above medication for 3 weeks then check with him.

Whats your opinion on the above medication?

700 dpm is high enough.
i am not sure if it is a good idea to continuously stimulate the H. pylori with rifaximin. Nevertheless, you cannot use it in your next round of H. pylori treatment.

perhaps you can ask your doctor about taking bismuth and PPI in the same time. Maybe that will get rid of the H. pylori.