Assessment of the prevalence of helicobacter pylori among patients attending at Curepharm Medical Centre

Abstract

Helicobacter pylori commonly referred to H. pylori is a non-spore forming, spiral and gram negative bacterium that colonizes the human stomach. It usually results into chronic gastritis, peptic ulcer and mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue lymphoma. H. pylori was isolated and identified from the human stomach by two great scientists, Robin Warren and Barry Marshall in 1982 who further revealed it as the causes peptic ulcers. Infections by H. pylori are one of the most common chronic bacterial illnesses of humans and higher rates of H. pylori infections have been reported in developing countries than in developed countries. H. pylori affects more than 50% of the world's population thus it was estimated that hundreds of millions of people will develop peptic ulcerations in their life time. Thus this study was aimed at assessing the prevalence of H. pylori among patients attending at Curepharm Medical Centre and thereby identifying the predisposing factors associated with it. A cross sectional study was conducted to assess the prevalence of H. pylori among patients attending at Curepharm Medical Centre located in Buzzi village. A total of 95 participants were enrolled using simple random sampling technique. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect information on demographic data, family structure, level of education, type of drinking water and hygienic habits of the study participants. The stool samples collected from the study participants were tested for the presence of H. pylori using H. pylori antigen test strips. In this study, 50 (52.6%) of the participants were females while 45 (47.4%) were males. The prevalence of H. pylori was 31.6% among the patients attending at Curepharm Medical centre and females had the highest prevalence (36.0%), The prevalence was high among the patients aged above 50 years (55.6%) and lowest among patients aged between 20-30 years of age (11.4%). In this study, the predisposing factors associated with H. pylori according to the social demographic data observed in patients were; divorce (35.7%), no formal education (38.5%), living in overcrowded rooms (37.2%), drinking un-boiled water (40.5%), not washing hands after visiting the toilets (48.7%) and operating business (34.8%) as their occupation. The people in the area around Curepharm Medical Centre should be sensitized to improve on their sanitation, living conditions and eating habits. Furthermore, studies should be done to assess the rural and urban prevalence and other predisposing factors using a large sample size.