Effect of long-term half-dose famotidine therapy on corpus gastritis in peptic ulcer disease.

Summary Background : Recent studies showed that acid-suppressive therapy aggravates corpus gastritis in patients with Helicobacter pylori infection. Aim : The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of famotidine, a histamine receptor antagonist on corpus gastritis in patients with peptic ulcer disease. Methods : We enrolled 287 patients, 173 with duodenal ulcer and 114 with gastric ulcer and 100 patients with H. pylori-positive gastritis as control subjects. Patients with peptic ulcer were classified according to whether or not they received famotidine-maintenance therapy (20 mg/day) after primary treatment. At the time of endoscopy, biopsy specimens were obtained from the antrum and the corpus. The degrees of neutrophil and lymphocyte infiltration, atrophy and intestinal metaplasia were scored according to the updated Sydney System. Results : The degrees of neutrophil infiltration and atrophy in the corpus were significantly less in patients with gastric ulcer or duodenal ulcer than in patients with H. pylori-positive gastritis (P < 0.01). Differences in the degrees of neutrophil infiltration and atrophy in the corpus between the non-maintenance group and the maintenance group were not significant. Conclusion : Long-term therapy with famotidine does not appear to lead to an increase in the incidence of corpus gastritis or corpus atrophy in patients with peptic ulcer disease.