Researchers from Stanford University scrutinized how Helicobacter pylori has the capacity to survive in the hostile stomach environment. Lead authors Connie Fung and Manuel Amieva of the said university find a special haven in a specialized niche in the gastric glands to maintain longevity.
Previous researches by Amieva Lab and others demonstrate that H. pylori colonies attach to epithelial cells deep in the gastric glands. It is hypothesized that his haven acts as a stable bacterial reservoirs.
High-resolution imaging and mapping techniques were utilized to visualize how H. pylori establish, spread, and persist within the gastric glands. These bacteria were marked by different fluorescent colors. CLARITY is a technique that was used to process infected stomachs to show transparent tissues. Organs can be visualized in their entirety. The researchers found that "a small number of bacteria act as "founders" that establish within individual gastric glands, replicate, and form colonies. Subsequently, the bacteria spread locally to adjacent glands, forming large clonal population "islands" of the same color that founded the initial gland colony. These population islands persist over time and prevent any incoming bacteria from establishing in the gland space. Consistent with this observation, H. pylori mutant strains that cannot colonize the glands are outcompeted by wild-type bacteria," as reported in Medical Xpress.
These findings demonstrate that a stable H. pylori reservoir is comfortable in a specialized niche in the gastric glands.
"We hope that by understanding the bacterial and host attributes necessary for sustaining these bacterial hideouts, it will lead to therapeutic targets to displace persistent aberrant mucosal colonization," says Manuel Amieva, pediatric infectious disease specialist and senior author of the report. "These principles may extend beyond H. pylori and improve our ability to permanently decolonize patients of bacterial pathogens and antibiotic-resistant microbes, and/or replace them with less virulent or beneficial microflora."
