Helicobacter Forums

I have mild upset stomach and slight feelings of discomfort in my left abdomen after eating certain foods. I tested positive for H.pylori via the blood antigen test IgG Ab. When I asked, my doctor mentioned the stool test is not needed and breath test in stopped in my area due to COVID-19. My doctor is recommending quadruple therapy to start. When I asked why not triple therapy, she mentioned our city has high resistance levels to the bacteria so it’s better to do quad instead of triple. I also asked if I could forgo PPI inhibitors as I have mild symptoms, if any. She mentioned not to change the regimen for risk of it not working.

Does this sound right for someone with mild symptoms? Should I seek a second opinion? I was considering the natural approaches however they don’t seem to cure the issues entirely from what I read. However for someone with little or no symptoms I feel quad therapy is intense, though I could be totally wrong here.

Thanks,
Joey

Your risk of gastric cancer increase every year due to the accumulation of damage caused by H. pylori.
It's harder to convince people without symptoms to get rid of H. pylori because they dont see the direct obvious benefit.

To get rid of H. pylori, PPI plays a very important role. The higher the PPI dose, the better the success rate. Your quadruple therapy could have over 90% success rate, but if you dont use any acid blocker, your success rate could drop to around 50%.

natural therapy may reduce the bacterial load, but is not the long term solution.

Hi Helico_expert,

Your response, reading this forum and the Maastricht V/Florence report have been great resources and helped me decide on proceeding with the quad therapy. I read the report after this initial post and it answered a lot of my questions. I went to see the doctor in the first place because something did not feel right, so to ignore the recommended treatment based on the available evidence would be illogical.

If the breath test is not available for after treatment confirmation, would the blood and or stool test suffice?

Thanks,
Joey

blood test is never the recommended test after treatment as it will always be positive.
your blood test will remain positive for months or years.

So you will have to either do breath or stool test to confirm the eradication.