Do you remember a few months ago I told you about a letter written to a Gastroenterology Journal by Prof. Mark Pritchard (and me – but I didn’t really contribute much) about Gastric Cancer and Pernicious Anaemia? Well there were a number of responses and now, out of the blue, I’ve been contacted by a research team based in London that wants to further investigate the cause and consequent prevention of patients with PA developing Gastric Cancer.
I investigated this in my last book and it seems that whilst patients with PA are more at risk of developing gastric cancer that risk is only slight. It’s all to do with Gastrin and histamine and it’s all very complicated. Anyway, it seems that the research team want to involve the society and next week I’m meeting up with the team to find out more about the project (that involves many millions of pounds by the way) and how the society can help.
It’s so refreshing to know that dedicated scientists are interested in this whole area of PA and Gastric Cancer(s) and that it’s the subject that is concentrating the minds of some very clever people. More about this in the future.
I’ve looked into this, as I suffer from Neuroendocrine Tumours (NETs – aka gastric carcinoids). The consultant for the specialist I saw wrote a review paper on the topic – http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24628514 – which says that Type 1 gastric carcinoids are caused by hypergastrinaemia (too much gastrin in the blood).
Gastrin is produced when we eat. It stimulates gastric parietal cells to produce hydrochloric acid. The resulting drop in stomach pH switches off gastrin production.
People with Autoimmune Metaplastic Gastric Atrophy (AMGA) don’t have many (or any) acid-producing cells. Which means the stomach pH stays high. Which means that gastrin production doesn’t get switched off. This is what causes high levels of gastrin.
These high levels prompt the formation of new cells in the stomach – and this can go wrong to for tumours. Luckily these NETs tend to be rare and indolent (to use my gastro’s favourite adjective). My treatment is to have a gastroscopy once a year to keep an eye on the little blighters.
I suggested to my gastro that substituting stomach acid with other acids (I use lime juice) should stop gastrin production, thus preventing hypergastrinaemia and removing the main cause of gastric NETs. When I see him next I’m hoping we can compare my gastrin levels before I started the lime juice protocol (high) with my gastrin levels after lime juice.
If this team are from a London Hospital associated with a monarch’s college then it would be great if they could look into the idea of restoring the natural feedback loop.
Great post FH. Many PA sufferers have gastric issues. I’m sure we will all be interested in this research. I look forward to hearing how it goes. ‘M’
Then we should push forward the research and knowledge about how we can best be addressed, and we’ll ask our GP to test gastrin and pepsinogene in our blood. My gastrin is above 1000 and pepsinogen only 3. Check also chromogranin A!