Efficacy and safety of eradication therapy for elderly patients with helicobacter pylori infection

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) is the most prevalent chronic bacterial infection and is associated with chronic gastritis, peptic ulcer disease, and gastric adenocarcinoma. Although eradication therapy is widely performed for H. pylori infection, adverse events (AEs) are of particular concern in the elderly. This study investigated the efficacy and safety of H. pylori eradication therapy for elderly patients. Retrospective investigation of 1271 cases (median age: 61 years, 730 male) of H. pylori infection was performed to compare clinical indications and outcomes among the younger group (<65 years old), elderly group (65–74 years old), and super-elderly group (>75 years old). Chronic gastritis (77.0%) and gastric and/or duodenal ulcer (16.4%) were the most frequent indications for eradication therapy in the cohort. The respective eradication and AE rates for the first and second treatment regimens were 92.1% (1044 of 1133 cases) and 9.1% (103 of 1133 cases) and 84.2% (123 of 146 cases) and 8.9% (13 of 146 cases). No significant differences were detected for eradication rate or AE frequency between the super-elderly group and the other groups. Prior to therapy, the super-elderly group had significantly less frequent chronic gastritis than the other groups but more frequent gastric or duodenal ulcer and post-gastric cancer treatment (all P < .001), indicating a reluctance for clinicians to treat very old patients, possibly due to unfounded concerns of complications. Triple therapy for H. pylori eradication is effective and safe, even for elderly patients.