MODIFICATION OF CHRISTENSEN UREASE TEST AS AN INEXPENSIVE TOOL FOR DETECTION OF HELICOBACTER-PYLORI

About half the world population is infected with Helicobacter pylori. Most live in developing countries where clinical studies face the cons traints of high costs of imported rapid diagnostic tests. In this work , we describe and validate a simple local urease test (LUT) to determi ne the presence of the bacterium in gastric biopsies, and report the i ncidence of infection among symptomatic patients in Caracas, Venezuela . Statistical comparison of LUT and CLOtest (Delta West, Bentley, Aust ralia) (N = 216 patients) showed that the probability of 95% agreement between the two test was 0.936. Overall incidence of infection determ ined by the LUT was 65% (N = 229), and it was higher in patients from public (72%; N = 153) than from private (50%; N = 76) hospitals (p = . 001). Therefore, the incidence of infection differs in two socioeconom ic groups that coexist in the same city. LUT may represent an affordab le tool in clinical studies needed to identify social factors that inc rease the risk of infection by H. pylori. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science In c.