Letters To The Editor
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Mar 28, 2017; 23(12): 2266-2268
Published online Mar 28, 2017. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v23.i12.2266
Helicobacter is preserved in yeast vacuoles! Does Koch's postulates confirm it?
Nader Alipour, Nasrin Gaeini
Nader Alipour, Department of Medical Microbiology and Biotechnology, DEU University and Graduate of Middle East Technical university (METU), Ankara 06800, Turkey
Nasrin Gaeini, Sıfa Medical Center, Tatlikuyu, Gebze 51338, Kocaeli, Turkey
Author contributions: Alipour N and Gaeini N contributed equally to this work; Alipour N wrote the paper; Gaeini N verified its medical aspects.
Conflict-of-interest statement: There is no conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Nasrin Gaeini, MD, Sıfa Medical Center, Tatlikuyu, Gebze 51338, Kocaeli, Turkey. nalipoure@yahoo.com
Telephone: +90-554-6162952 Fax: +90-262-6412926
Received: November 8, 2016
Peer-review started: November 10, 2016
First decision: December 5, 2016
Revised: January 10, 2017
Accepted: February 16, 2017
Article in press: February 17, 2017
Published online: March 28, 2017
Processing time: 139 Days and 17.2 Hours
Abstract

The manuscript titled “Vacuoles of Candida yeast behave as a specialized niche for Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori)” not only has not been prepared in a scientific manner but the methodology used was not adequate, and therefore the conclusion reached was not correct. First of all, “yeast” is a broad terminology covering a great number of genera and species of unicellular micro-organisms. The authors should have defined the organism with its binary scientific name. This measure would allow experiment reproduction by the scientific community. Moreover, the criteria established by Robert Koch to identify a specific microorganism or pathogen was not adopted in the methodology used. Regarding the methodology applied, use of the chicken egg-yolk (IgY) antibody and PCR of the apparently tainted yeast population to prove H. pylori existence in the yeast vacuoles might be main factors for their wrong conclusions. Bacterial tropism toward yeast extract is a known phenomenon, and yeast extract is one of the main ingredients in culture media. Their internalization through phagocytosis or similar pathways does not seem possible or practical because of the thick and cellulosic yeast wall. While the small size of yeast cells does not support their ability in harboring several H. pylori, other observations such as inefficiency of anti-fungal therapy as anti-Helicobacter therapy strongly reject the conclusion reached by the above-mentioned article.

Keywords: Helicobacter pylori; Yeast; Acanthamoeba castellanii; Koch’s postulates

Core tip: An article titled “Vacuoles of Candida yeast behave as a specialized niche for Helicobacter pylori,” was published in the World Journal of Gastroenterology (2014; 20: 5263-5273). This “letter to the editor” is intended to demonstrate the shortcomings of that article related to the methodologies applied, the conclusion reached and the outcomes presented.