Background/Aims: Helicobacter pylori may protect against immune-mediated disorders such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and asthma. This study evaluated whether eradication was associated with IBD and asthma in Korean children. Methods: Data were collected from the Korean National Health Insurance information on patients younger than 18 years and without a prior diagnosis of IBD or asthma from January 2007 to September 2020. Patients confirmed with H. pylori infection were divided into the eradication and non-eradication group. We compared the incidence of IBD and asthma in infected patients with an age, and sex-matched control group. Results: In total, 979,663 patients were selected based on the inclusion criteria and 2,779 patients were included based on the exclusion criteria. The occurrence of IBD in infected patients was statistically significant (p < 0.05) but there was no association of infection with asthma. There was no association with eradication and the development of IBD and asthma. The infected group had a shorter duration till diagnosis of IBD than the control group. Conclusions Our study found H. pylori infection to be associated with the development of IBD in children. However, eradication does not increase IBD and asthma in children.

PURPOSE: Activation of the innate immune system and chronic low-grade inflammation are thought to be involved in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis and also thought to be associated with type 2 diabetes and its complications. As a receptor for bacterial lipopolysaccharide and heat-shock proteins, Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) is one of the central regulators of the immune response. Recent studies have reported an association between TLR4 polymorphisms and diabetes and its complications in Caucasian populations. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this study, we analyzed the association between TLR4 gene polymorphisms in patients with features of type 2 diabetes and healthy controls in Korea. Two polymorphisms of the TLR4 gene (Asp299Gly and Thr399Ile) were examined in 225 diabetic patients and 153 healthy controls using polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) and single-strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP). RESULTS: No Asp299Gly or Thr399Ile mutations were detected in any of the 378 subjects. Seven subjects from each group who had slightly different SSCP patterns were selected for sequencing, but we found no TLR4 polymorphisms on Exon3. The Asp299Gly and Thr399Ile TLR4 gene polymorphisms were absent in both groups, which was similar to the results for Japanese and Chinese Han subjects. CONCLUSION: Our data and other Asian data suggest that a racial difference can be found in the frequency of the TLR4 polymorphism.
Adult ; Amino Acids/genetics ; Base Sequence ; Female ; Humans ; Korea ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Molecular Sequence Data ; Mutation/genetics ; Polymorphism, Genetic/*genetics ; Toll-Like Receptor 4/*genetics