Helicobacter Forums

My mother, 64 years of age, was just diagnosed with stage 2 stomach cancer, (T3 N0 M0)
I am pretty sure that h pylori caused her disease. Doctors have not tested or confirmed my hunch because they say there isn't anything they can do about the possibility of her carrying the h pylori bacteria at this moment because they have to aggressively treat her cancer. Her treatment plan includes neoadjuvant chemotherapy, surgery, and then adjuvant chemotherapy. I am worried that my mother contracted h pylori from the well water in her home. That being the case, she won't be able to recover if she continues to drink the water. My father was diagnosed with h pylori a couple of years ago and took antibiotics to get rid of it. For all I know, he could still be carrying the bacteria too. A neighbor passed away from stomach cancer a few years ago. I wonder if the groundwater in this area, (Montrose, Pennsylvania), is infected with the h pylori bacteria? I wonder if there is a connection here.
I have been doing a ton of reading and research online and I came across your pursuit on h pylori causing gastric illness. I also know that Penn State University has been doing testing around PA to verify h pylori in different areas.
I want to get my parents well water tested as soon as possible. I'm not really sure where to start or who to contact. Would someone from Penn State be interested or be able to test our well?
skayerm Posts: 1Joined: Tue Jul 26, 2011 6:02 am

The techniques for proving H.pylori in an environmental sample are not accurate enough to make it a useful test. I suggest that you should just focus on the cancer issue and then, in 12 months when everything is settled one way or another, have the family members undergo breath test and serology for Hp. Reinfection with Hp is uncommon. It is unlikely that Hp is really present in Pennsylvania well water. I recall a paper on the issue several years back, but I think the results they cited were due to false positive flourescent immunology reactions. They could not actually culture Helicobacter and the presence of "Hp" did not correlate with the presence of E.coli which it should have done if it was really Hp. That paper was by Hegarty and you can read it here: http://www.bvsde.ops-oms.org/bvsacg/e/c ... 5-2672.pdf.
Barry Marshall

p.s. But you are correct about Hp being the likely instigator of the gastric cancer. In USA it is probably transmitted between family members rather than by water.