Summary of Workshop

Abstract

There have been extensive investigations of the immune response to Helicobacter pylori in recent years. It is clear that chronic infection results in a systemic humoral response to multiple bacterial proteins and that there is marked variability in responses between different infected individuals. In part, this reflects the genomic variability of the organism. There have been many studies which have investigated the association between humoral recognition of specific bacterial proteins and gastroduodenal disease and/or the seventy of gastritis. Studies until recently have relied on Western blotting but with the cloning and expression of a number of bacterial proteins, specific immune responses and disease associations can be investigated using recombinant H. pylori proteins. Selected communications were on immune responses to two recombinant H. pylori proteins, CagA and HspA.