The mechanism behind the epidemiologically evident inverse relation between Helicobacter pylori seropositivity and risk of oesophageal adenocarcinoma (OAC) remains obscure. Severe corpus gastritis is unlikely to be in the causal pathway. With the hypothesis of a uniformly low risk, the associations of OAC with duodenal ulcer and gastric ulcer were explored, both linked to H pylori infection but with different patterns of bacterial colonisation and intragastric acidity. Possible associations of oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) with these ulcer types were also addressed.
