MedWire News: People undergoing eradication therapy for the stomach ulcer bug Helicobacter pylori may benefit from eating a yogurt containing 'good' bacteria to improve the chances of successful treatment, research suggests.

The standard treatment for people infected with Helicobacter pylori is triple therapy with a stomach acid-suppressing drug called a proton pump inhibitor and two antibiotics, explain Dr Nayoung Kim, from Seoul National University Bundang Hospital in South Korea, and colleagues.

However, they add: "Recently, several studies have concluded that Helicobacter pylori eradication rates are reducing, and that this is closely related to its increased resistance to antibiotics."

To investigate whether adding a probiotic yogurt to triple therapy improves the success rate of anti-Helicobacter pylori treatment, the team studied 347 patients who were infected with the stomach ulcer-causing bug.

All of the patients were assigned to triple therapy for 7 days, but 168 were also asked to eat a probiotic yogurt containing four types of 'good' bacteria for 3 weeks starting on the first day of triple therapy.

Four weeks later, the researchers found that 88% of the patients who were assigned to eat the probiotic yogurt were no longer infected with Helicobacter pylori, compared with 79% of those in the triple therapy-only group.

However, more patients in the yogurt group that the triple therapy-only group experienced side effects, such as a metallic taste in the mouth and diarrhoea, but these were mainly mild or moderate in intensity.

Dr Kim and colleagues conclude in the journal Helicobacter: "The addition of [probiotic] yogurt to triple therapy did not reduce the side-effects of triple therapy. But it increased the Helicobacter pylori eradication rate... encouraging more research in this field."