Published online Jun 15, 2001. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v7.i3.376
Revised: November 23, 2000
Accepted: February 16, 2001
Published online: June 15, 2001
AIM: To determine whether study on the carcinogenic potential of reflux juice from patients with remote gastrectomy could clarify the inherent relationship between duodenal reflux and gastric stump cancer.
METHODS: A total of 37 reflux juice samples (13 Billroth I, 24 Billroth II) were employed in the present study. A two-stage transformation assay using BALB/c 3T3 cells was carried out to test the initiating or promoting activity of these samples.
RESULTS: Two of 18 (11.1%) reflux samples exerted initiating activities, whereas 9/19 (47.4%) samples enhanced the MNNG-initiating cell transformation, suggesting the duodenal reflux juice might more frequently possess the tumor-promoter activity (P = 0.029). In addition, there was no difference in initiating activities of the samples irrespective of surgical procedures (P = 0.488), while Billroth II samples exhibited stronger tumor-promoter activity than Billroth I samples (P = 0.027). Furthermore, the promoter activities were well correlated with the histological changes of the stomas (rs = 0.625, P = 0.004), but neither their cytotoxicities nor initiating activities had this correlation (Probabilities were 0.523 and 0.085, respectively).
CONCLUSION: The duodenal reflux juice from patients with remote postgastrectomy did have carcinogenic potential, and suggested that tumor-promoting activity should principally account for the high incidence of gastric cancer in gastrectomy patients. In contrast, it is difficult to explain the high stump-cancer incidence with the "N-nitroso compounds" theory-a popular theory for the intact stomach carcinogenesis, and it seemed to be justified to focus chemoprevention of this cancer on the tumor-promoting potential of reflux juice.