Pepsinogens and Gastrin-17 in corpus-restricted gastritis

Abstract

Background: Corpus-restricted gastritis (usually of autoimmune origin) may result in pernicious anaemia as well as gastric cancer. We analysed serum biomarkers (pepsinogen I, pepsinogen II, pepsinogen I/II ratio and gastrin-17) in patients with corpus-restricted gastritis. Methods: Patients with corpus-restricted gastritis according to the histology report were included to the study group. This was a sub-group analysis of 806 patients being referred for endoscopy due to dyspeptic symptoms; 5 biopsies were analysed according to updated Sydney system. Pepsinogens I and II as well as gas- trin-17 (G-17) were measured in plasma samples using an ELISA (Biohit, Oyj., Finland). PgI/II was used to characterize the status of gastric mucosa (PgI/II < 3 was considered decreased and being characteristic for corpus atrophy). A Spear- man’s correlation was run to assess the relationship between G-17 and PgI/II. Results: Altogether 38 patients (5% of the initial group) had corpus-restricted gastritis. In 19 patients (50%) PgI/II was reduced. There was a strong negative correlation between G-17 and PI/II ratio (r s = 0.783, p < .001) indicating increased G-17 levels in patients with more severe atrophy in the corpus. In all except one patient with low PI/II, G-17 values >5 pmol/L were observed, there- fore demonstrating compensatory increased secretion of the antral G-cells. One patient with PgI/II<3, demonstrated no substantial increase of G-17. Conclusions: Increased G-17 levels were found to be correlating to decreased pepsinogen levels in patients with corpus-restricted gastritis.