pylori Comparaison de l ’ activité de 10 antibiotiques contre des souches cliniques de Helicobacter pylori au moyen de trois techniques différentes

Helicobacter pylori is one of the most common infections in terms of number of people infected (up to 50% of the world’s population [1]), and the bacterium has been recently designated a definite carcinogen by the World Health Organization. This implies that antibiotic use has to be controlled to avoid potentially serious resistance problems. Treatment of medical conditions associated with the presence of H pylori consists mainly of oral antibiotics, frequently administered with a proton pump inhibitor. Treatment regimens are numerous, and efficacy may be quite variable depending on the combinations used and their duration. Nevertheless, antibiotics play a key role in curing symptomatic patients harbouring the bacterium. It is therefore essential to monitor the pattern of susceptibility of H pylori to antimicrobial agents. Many parts of the world have high resistance rates to metronidazole, ranging from 6% in developed countries to 84% in third world countries (2,3), because of its extensive use for parasitic infections. Furthermore, metronidazole resistance has been associated with treatment failure in certain studies (4,5). In Canada, H pylori resistance patterns to antibiotics have