| Sumario: | Objective: To study the relationship between daily alcohol consumption and the result of eradication therapy for Helicobacter pylori using omeprazole, clarithromycin and amoxicillin for 1 week.Design: Clinical trial.Setting: Urban health centre, general medicine section.Participants: One hundred and fifty-six patients with a diagnosis of peptic ulcus or chronic gastritis. Helicobacter pylori infection was confirmed by the urease test, the 14C-urea breath test, IgG serology or biopsy.Interventions: A combination of omeprazole, 20 mg twice daily, clarithromycin, 500 mg twice daily, and amoxicillin, 1000 mg twice daily was administered for 1 week. No other drugs were given. Four to 8 weeks later a 14C-urea breath test was carried out to confirm eradication.Main Outcome Measures: Logistic regression was used to assess the relationship between eradication and daily alcohol consumption (main covariable), age, sex, smoking, length of illness, pathology studied (ulcus or gastritis) and therapeutic compliance.Results: Eradication (intention to treat analysis) was successful in 118 patients (75.6%; 95% CI, 68.9-82.4). The only variable significantly associated with the result of the therapy was daily alcohol consumption, with a higher probability of failure in non-consumers (29.9%) than in consumers (12.2%), adjusted OR 3.24 (95% CI, 1.12-9.20; P = 0.03). Eradication was dose dependent: 70.1% in abstemious patients (n = 107), rising to 79.3% in users of 4-16 g of pure ethanol a day (n = 29) and to 100% in users of 18-60 g daily (n = 20) with a P value of 0.005 for the trend.Conclusions: Daily alcohol consumption appears to have an additive effect in this eradication therapy.
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