Pretreatment with pantoprazole suppresses H. pylori but does not impair the efficacy of a consecutive short-term, low-dose triple therapy.

This short-term triple therapy with pantoprazole, amoxicillin and metronidazole provides an effective regimen especially in patients with metronidazole-sensitive strain.

In a prospective study 27 patients (13 women, 14 men; mean age 62 [45-83] years) with Helicobacter (H.) pylori associated disease received over 7 days pantoprazole (40 mg twice daily), clarithromycin (500 mg twice daily) and metronidazole (500 mg twice daily). Six patients had gastric ulcer, 4 duodenal ulcer, 4 erosive gastritis, 6 erosive duodenitis and 7 had H. pylori-positive functional dyspepsia. Pre-treatment oesophago-gastro-duodenoscopy was combined in 4 patients with antral and in 4 others with body-of-stomach biopsies to demonstrate H, pylori (urease test, specific culture and histology). The H. pylori status was checked with the 13C-urea breath test 4 weeks after the end of treatment. In addition, 9 patients with peptic ulcer were examined endoscopically at least 2 weeks after onset of the treatment to check for any healing of the ulcers, 25 of the patients completed the study according to the protocol. The H. pylori eradication rate was 100% (25 of 25 patients), while the "intention to treat" analysis gave a rate of 92.6% (25 of the 27 patients). The peptic ulcers were found to be healed in all 9 patients who had been endoscoped. One woman developed a reversible stomatitis, but the drug treatment did not have to be stopped. -These findings indicate that short-term triple treatment in the described manner is efficacious in curing H. pylori infection and any peptic ulcer. It is thus a highly promising treatment of H. pylori-associated diseases.