Letter to the Editor
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2024. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Endosc. Nov 16, 2024; 16(11): 623-626
Published online Nov 16, 2024. doi: 10.4253/wjge.v16.i11.623
Postprandial gastrin-17 level is a useful dynamic marker for atrophic gastritis
Huck-Joo Tan, Eunice Zhi-Yi Tan
Huck-Joo Tan, Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Cengild GI Medical Center, Kuala Lumpur 50490, Malaysia
Eunice Zhi-Yi Tan, Department of Internal Medicine, University Hospital Southampton, Southampton SO16 6YD, United Kingdom
Co-first authors: Huck-Joo Tan and Eunice Z Tan.
Author contributions: Tan HJ and Tan EZY reviewed the literature, performed the original drafting of the manuscript and editing of all successive versions, and provided approval of the final version submitted.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (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: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Huck-Joo Tan, FACG, Attending Doctor, Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Cengild GI Medical Center, 7 Jalan Kerinchi, Bangsar South, Kuala Lumpur 50490, Malaysia. hucktanhj@gmail.com
Received: August 15, 2024
Revised: September 30, 2024
Accepted: October 10, 2024
Published online: November 16, 2024
Processing time: 75 Days and 15.7 Hours
Abstract

Atrophic gastritis and intestinal metaplasia may progress to gastric malignancy. Non-invasive serum biomarkers have been extensively studied and proven to be useful as a screening tool to stratify risk and identify patients for endoscopy to detect early gastric cancer. These non-invasive biomarkers have been endorsed and recommended by many international consensus guidelines. In this letter, we reviewed the literature and evidence supporting the use of serum biomarkers as a dynamic test to monitor the status of atrophic gastritis.

Keywords: Atrophic gastritis; Pepsinogen; Gastrin-17; Gastric cancer; Biomarkers

Core Tip: Serological markers such as pepsinogen and gastrin-17 (G-17) have been proposed as useful surrogate biomarkers for atrophic gastritis. Previous studies have shown that patients with atrophic corpus gastritis have low pepsinogen-I and pepsinogen ratio values but high G-17 levels, whereas patients with atrophic antral gastritis have low G-17 levels. Low serum levels of pepsinogen and G-17 are predictive of extensive gastric atrophy and early gastric cancer. Kotelevets et al demonstrated the sensitivity of postprandial gastrin levels in gastric atrophy can be improved with a specific cut-off level. Postprandial G-17 levels may serve as dynamic markers for atrophic gastritis.