Seroprevalence of anti-<i>Helicobacter pylori</i> antibodies in population of Azerbaijan, Iran

Abstract

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) is a common infection which can lead to gastritis, peptic ulcer disease and gastric-originated malignancies. In this study prevalence of seropositivity of each immunoglobulins against H. pylori and also, their association with sex and age were evaluated in a sample of the ordinary population from Tabriz, Iran.In this study, 3733 individuals referred to the laboratory for Para clinical tests between 2019 and 2022, participated. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was utilized to detect the quantity of anti-H. pylori Immunoglobulin G (IgG), Immunoglobulin M (IgM), and Immunoglobulin A (IgA). The statistical analysis was conducted using the 20th version of SPSS software.Out of 3733 participants, 1235 (33.1%) were male and 2498 (66.9%) were female. 57.9% of the participants have positive IgG serology. Also, this index was 0.3% and 11.6% for IgM and IgA, respectively. The mean (SD) age was 40.72 (16.91). There was no significant relationship between gender and IgG and IgA positiveness (p-values = 0.11 and 0.08 respectively). For IgM, serum positiveness was higher in females (0.4% for females and 0.2% for males; p-value: 0.009). The prevalence of positive IgG was increasing significantly (p-value < 0.001). For IgM and IgA there was a significant increase in the number of seropositive individuals with an increase in age (p-value = 0.005; and < 0.001 respectively).This study reveals that the prevalence of H. pylori in Tabriz is approximately 57% which is in the range estimated to be in Iran, but in comparison to developed countries, it was higher. The prevalence of anti-H. pylori immunoglobulins increases significantly with age.