Antral mucosa healing at long-term follow-up in patients with corpus atrophic gastritis and concomitant antral gastritis may mimic autoimmune gastritis.

Background and aim: Corpus atrophic gastritis (CAG) is defined as autoimmune when the antrum is spared, representing this element a crucial diagnostic criterium of autoimmune gastritis. In contrast, CAG with concomitant antral gastritis (AG), atrophic or non-atrophic, is generally attributed to H. pylori infection. During the natural history of CAG, possible antrum healing has been supposed. The current study aimed to assess the antral mucosa histopathological changes at long-term follow-up (FU) with respect to baseline in patients with CAG and concomitant atrophic or non-atrophic gastritis AG.

Methods: Retrospective study on 130 patients with histologically diagnosed CAG with atrophic or non-atrophic AG. Mean FU gastroscopy was at 40.6 (range 4-192) months. Patients with confirmed CAG (n = 117; median age 66, range 20-87 years; 67.5 % F) were finally included. At baseline, 47 (40.2 %) had non-atrophic and 70 (59.8 %) atrophic AG. Helicobacter pylori (Hp) infection was present at histology in 27.3 % of patients, all treated.

Results: At FU, 30/117(25.6 %) patients showed a complete antral healing; 11/29(37.9 %) were Hp positive at baseline, cured in all but one. Atrophic AG regressed in 16/70(22.8 %) patients. Both, antral healing and regression of antral AG, were found to be similar in Hp-cured and not-cured/ naïve-negatives patients (p > 0.05).

Conclusion: In a subset of CAG patients, AG may regress at long-term FU irrespective of Hp cure, thus mimicking autoimmune atrophic gastritis and raising concerns about its current histopathological diagnostic criteria.