Risk factors for acquiring Helicobacter pylori infection in a group of Tuscan teenagers

Risk factors for acquiring Helicobacter pylori infection include hygienic, social, and environmental conditions. Some of these conditions usually change over time. We therefore investigated the existence of risk factors in a group of teenagers living in a place with the same environmental characteristics, in which hygienic and crowding conditions have not changed significantly in the last 20 years. A group of 164 students, mostly borne in 1977, attending four different schools, were examined serologically for H. pylori infection and CagA status. The importance of the risk factors for the transmission of the infection were evaluated by the chi2 test. P values <0.05 were considered significant. Twenty-two students (13.4%) were H. pylori seropositive. Students attending teachers' college and high school of arts were infected significantly more often than those attending high school (P = 0.011 and P = 0.012, respectively). Students who smoked and students whose parents had a manual job had an increased risk of acquiring the infection (P = 0.002, and P = 0.036, respectively). Crowding conditions and the presence of domestic animals were close to being statistically significant. Other factors, such as gender, number of bathrooms and bedrooms, sharing the bed with adults as a child, presence of a sexual partner, and a family history of peptic ulcer and gastric cancer, did not increase the risk of infection. The prevalence of seropositivity for CagA was similar in the various risk groups. Manual job of parents and smoking were the most important factors for acquiring H. pylori infection.