Helicobacter Forums

I’m 29 years old and it’s been a month since I’ve finished up my H. Pylori treatment through a quadruple dose therapy. It seems to be getting better slowly but I do have concerns about my iron being low and I have been having a slight stitch of pain in my back on the left side near the trapezius muscle when swallowing. I do have hypochondria and high anxiety and looking at the symptoms online, I constantly read the worse diagnosis. Also, how long will it take for my stomach to get completely better?

It's good that you are able to complete the quadruple therapy. How did it go? which antibiotics did you take? any bad side effect?

It is known that H. pylori infection can lead to low B12 and iron. Studies have shown that after H. pylori eradication, B12 and iron can restore.

The recovery is subjective. It depends on how much damage was already done. Hopefully you'll recover soon.

Most importantly is to stay positive. wait a month and repeat the breath test to make sure H. pylori is really gone.

I have taken Amoxicillin, Metronidazole, Pantoprazole & Azithromycin. I was feeling okay while taking the meds, but I started feeling sick towards the last two days of the doses. The worse side affect was diarrhea and coffee like defecation. I have been on the edge thinking that I have stomach or esophageal cancer due to the H. Pylori, which has heavily increased my anxiety. I have another stool test on Friday to determine whether or not the H. Pylori was eradicated.

Friday is your stool test. try not to take any medication before the test. If you have reflux symptom, you can take some ranitidine to help.

I got my iron results back and they look back to normal. I don’t know if eating a triple cheeseburger before my iron test could affect my test but it looked normal. Next, is the retesting of the H. Pylori. Also, how prevalent is stomach and esophageal cancer associated with H. Pylori?

that's a good question. In Australia, where H. pylori infection is very low, there is very little gastric cancer (2000 cases a year in the whole Australia, 25 mil population).

https://stomach-cancer.canceraustralia. ... statistics

China on the hand, more than 50% of the population has H. pylori and about 300,000 cases of gastric cancer reported in year 2005 alone (about 50 gastric cancer/100,000 people).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4077485/

Some people may argue that it's population and environment specific, but I think the evidence of H. pylori association with gastric cancer is solid.

in regards to esophagus cancer, because H. pylori do not colonise in the throat, the association is weaker. However, I think the constant acid reflux damaging the throat is one of the key factors for esophagus cancer.