Antibiotics May Help Stop Stomach Cancer

Although stomach cancer remains one of the world's five most common cancers among men and women, its incidence has steadily declined in the U.S. over recent decades -- thanks, say experts, to lower rates of helicobacter pylori bacteria infection among Americans. The link between H. pylori and stomach cancer is well established. Still, H. pylori infection is present in nearly half the world's population, and it's rampant in parts of Southeast Asia, Latin America, and other countries with crowded and less hygienic living conditions. The bacterium is so implicated in stomach cancers that in 1994, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified H. pylori as a group 1 carcinogen -- a definite cause of human cancer. But the question remains: Will successfully treating those infected with H. pylori with antibiotics reduce rates of stomach cancer?