Study reveals key details about bacterium that increases risk for stomach cancer

More than half of the people in the world host colonies of a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori in their stomachs.Although it ’s harmless to many, H. pylori can cause stomach cancer as well as ulcers and other gastric conditions. Doctors tend to prescribe multiple antibiotics to defeat the microbe, but that strategy can lead to antibiotic-resistant superbugs.Now, afinding by UCLA scientists may lead to a better approach. The researchers have determined the molecular structure of a protein that enables H. pylori to stay alive in the stomach, and elucidated the mechanism by which that protein works.Z. Hong Zhou, the study ’s corresponding author and a UCLA professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics, said the findings answer questions that have been sought ever since 2005, when two Australian scientistswon a Nobel Prize for their discovery of H. pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease.The UCLA study, which was published online by Science Advances, was co-led by Keith Munson, a recently retired senior researcher in UCLA ’s Division of Digestive Diseases.H. pylori thrives in the harsh environment of the stomach due to its urea channel, a protein in the bacterium ’s inner cell membrane that detects the environment’s acidity and acts as a gate. When conditions in the stomach grow too acidic, the urea channel opens to let in a compound called urea. Urea is normally excreted as a waste product in urine, but it also can be found in relati...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news