1.   We therefore studied acid secretory responses to gastrin in a series of patients with duodenal ulcer disease before and after treatment to eradicate H pylori.

2.   Bismuth has also become popular in recent years as a treatment in peptic ulcer to eradicate Helicobacter pylori.

3.   Thus, amoxicillin plus omeprazole should be recommended as the treatment of choice in eradicating H pylori in patients with duodenal ulcer disease.

4.   Because bismuth and antibiotic monotherapy fail to eradicate H pylori in an appreciable proportion of patients, triple therapy has been tried and is now the treatment of choice.

5.   Omeprazole monotherapy merely suppressed bacterial colonisation, especially in the antral region, and eradicated H pylori in individual cases only.

6.   In small scale pilot studies omeprazole plus ciprofloxacin or cefixime failed to eradicate H pylori in the vast majority of patients.

7.   The dramatic effect of eradicating Helicobacter pylori on the medium term natural course of duodenal ulcer disease is sufficiently well reported by now.

8.   If this latter proposition is true, it would suggest that most patients in whom H pylori has been eradicated are unlikely to become reinfected at a later date.