Misapprehensions about the causes of peptic ulcer
By Lawal Dahiru Mamman
Ulcer is one of the most common diseases world wide. According to a paper published by World Journal of Gastroenterology, each year peptic ulcer disease (PUD) affects 4 million people around the world.
Complications are encountered in 10%-20% of these patients and 2%-14% of the ulcers will perforate. Perforated peptic ulcer (PPU) is a quite rare, but life threatening disease and the mortality varies from 10%-40%. With this values the cause of the disease seems unclear to many.
After a simple random sampling of friends, it was discovered that over 80% attributes the cause of ulcer to hunger. In the international communities spicy food is thought to be the most common, and others including notable scientists like Alfred Nobel; Swedish chemist who bequeathed his wealth to establish the Noble Prize thought it was stress. I decided to share what I have learnt of the diseases as a result of horrible experience from same.
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After been infected eight years ago and suffered for five years I dived into finding out the etiology and epidemiology of the disease. Only on a faithful day to stumble on a picture on Facebook with the name Barry Marshall “the man who injected himself with H. Pylori to prove the cause of ulcer’. Filled with amusement and respect for what the great scientist did no prove his point as well as enlighten the world, I went further to Google his name.
Barry Marshall’s experiment was a confirmation of the work of his colleague Dr Robin Warren an Australian pathologist who was the first to discovered curved bacteria; which was later named Helicobacter pylori, colonising lower parts of the stomach of 50% of his patients who had their stomach biopsied. His discovery became a thing of interest to Dr Mershall and together they made a breakthrough in 1982.
To give a more conclusive evidence Dr Barry Marshall went further to infect himself with the bacterium after which he developed his own stomach ulcer. The effort of the duo in ascertaining the cause of peptic ulcer was not recognised until in 2005 when the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden awarded them Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
While the most common cause of peptic ulcer is infection with the bacterium Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori), long-term use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen are also responsible for about 10-20% of the causes.
Hunger, stress and spicy food may not be the cause of peptic ulcer, they are sure to act as catalyst that takes the pain or symptoms of the infection to another level.
Mamman, a corps member writes from Abuja and can be reached via [email protected]
