Diagnosis of Helicobacter pylori infection.

Important progress is being made in endoscopic methods which allow clinicians to predict the presence of Helicobacter pylori based on characteristics of gastric mucosa and to obtain targeted biopsies. There are also important developments in molecular methods with various techniques derived from standard PCR, applied both on gastric biopsies and stool specimens. Progress is being made in microfluidic systems to get a reliable diagnosis in a very short time. The interest of the 13 C urea breath test has been confirmed as well as stool antigen tests. Attempts are being made to find biological markers of premalignant conditions by serology, other than pepsinogens.