GASTROSPIRILLUM-HOMINIS, ANOTHER GASTRIC SPIRAL BACTERIUM

'Gastrospirillum hominis' is a 'new' tightly coiled gram-negative bacterium carrying bundles of sheathed polar flagella. It has been rather infrequently detected in antral and, even more rarely, in fundic mucosa samples removed at endoscopy from patients investigated for Helicobacter pylori colonization. Until now, it has remained noncultivable but has successfully been maintained in laboratory mice. Its identity with similar bacteria found in the stomachs of cats, dogs, monkeys, pigs. and other animals is uncertain. It was probably already seen by early investigators in the first half of this century. Preliminary data published in case reports suggest that it is associated with more or less active chronic antral gastritis, that it is restricted to the gastric epithelium, and that it possesses a urease. thus limiting the specificity of urease tests for H. pylori. There is hitherto no solid proof that it can induce inflammation although it seems capable of invading parietal and other glandular cells and causing ultrastructural changes. Similar organisms spontaneously colonizing the stomachs of rhesus monkeys were shown to increase gastric acid secretion.