Abstract

Background: Patients with chronic liver damage often suffer from functional disturbances and pathologic changes in the stomach, including ulceration, erosions and chronic gastritis. It was attempted to establish whether there is a correlation between histopathologic abnormalities of the gastric mucosa and the extent of histopathologic changes in liver bioptates, i.e. inflammatory activity and fibrosis (Knodell’s index) in patients with chronic hepatopathy. Material/Methods: The study was carried out in 4 groups of patients: group I - 10 subjects with autoimmune hepatitis, group II – 9 patients with chronic toxic liver damage, group III – 11 patients with chronic hepatitis caused by HBV, and group IV - 36 patients with chronic hepatitis caused by HCV. All the patients underwent gastroscopy with collection of gastric mucosa bioptates (from the antrum and the gastric body) as well as liver biopsy.Results: The most frequent gastroscopy finding in all the studied groups were signs of gastritis: in group I -90%, in group II -78%, in group III –64% and in group IV-99%. Gastric mucosa histopathology assessed according to Whitehead’s classification most frequently led to the diagnosis of gastritis chronica profunda (Group I-80%, Group II-78%, Group III-73% and Group IV –58%). No correlation was found between inflammatory activity in the liver assessed according to Knodell’s scale and the extent of changes in histopathology of the gastric mucosa (p=0.1). A negative correlation which, however, does not reach significance level (p=0.054), is observed between the extent of fibrosis in liver bioptates and histopathologic abnormalities in the gastric mucous membrane. Conclusions: No statistically significant correlation between the extent of gastric mucosa damage and severity of inflammatory lesions and hepatic fibrosis was found.

Keywords: Helicobacter pylori, Liver Diseases, gastritis