The differences between the IBD group and both control groups were statistically significant (P<0.0001). Sequencing of PCR products revealed blast matches of 96–100% within the CD cohort to H. trogontum, H. bilis, H. canis, H. cinaedi, Helicobacter suncus, ‘Flexispira rappini’ and H. pylori. Only one faecal sample was PCR-positive from the combined control groups, with sequence identification being attributed to H. trogontum (100%). The presence of H. pylori DNA is fascinating as

all of the recruits except for one symptomatic control child were negative for gastric H. pylori on both rapid urease test and histological assessment. The authors debate whether H. pylori could have colonized Atezolizumab mw non-gastric tissue, which in itself would prove a unique observation in human studies. If true, this would have significant

impact on efforts to explain the negative BI-6727 association between H. pylori and IBD as described above. Basset et al. (2004) published a study examining 72 English patients (35 IBD of whom 11 CD, 20 UC and four indeterminate and 37 controls of whom 19 were diarrhoeal and 18 nondiarrhoeal) with PCR for both Helicobacter and enterotoxigenic Bacteroides fragilis. Although 72 patients were enrolled in the study, only 65 had available colonic biopsy DNA and 60 had luminal washing available. Of the 65 colonic biopsies, two (3%) were Helicobacter genus PCR positive and these were deemed non-pylori Helicobacter by absence of the H. pylori glmM gene on a separate PCR. Both of these patients had IBD, one with UC and the other with indeterminate colitis. These organisms were not identified to the species level. Interestingly, the luminal washings were investigated by a similar methodology, but they revealed a different positivity rate, with four of 60 (6.6%) being deemed positive for Helicobacter, of which one was assumed to be H. pylori because of

glmM positivity. The H. pylori patient was Buspirone HCl a control with anaemia and the other three were comprised of one CD and two diarrhoeal controls. The difference in organism prevalence between faeces and colonic mucosa fits nicely with previous observations that these two habitats are entirely distinct (Eckburg et al., 2005). Our own group has investigated the prevalence of non-pylori Helicobacter organisms in IBD tissue from both adults and children. Our first study examined adult UC colonic tissue against colonic tissue from adult controls undergoing colorectal cancer screening utilizing multiple molecular methods (Thomson et al., 2008). This work demonstrated that straightforward Helicobacter PCR assays in our cohort were falsely negative and that the pick-up rate of non-pylori Helicobacter in UC varied between 70% utilizing Southern blot and 79% utilizing FISH.