Ulcer Clue? Molecule could be key to stomach ailment
By Nathan Seppa
An old adage once held that stomach ulcers arise from “hurry, worry, and curry.” Scientists dispelled that notion in the early 1980s with the discovery that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori causes most such ulcers. Twenty years later, with the modern knowledge that half the world’s people harbor H. pylori in their stomachs, scientists remain baffled as to why only a fraction of these infections leads to ulcers.
Research in mice now suggests that a protein on the surface of cells paves the way for a toxin produced by H. pylori to damage the stomach lining.