Prevalence and Relationship between Helicobacter pylori infection and Obesity in the Kurdish population

Background: Globally obesity is a commonly health condition. A great number of investigators have been studying the association between Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection and obesity. It’s also known that H. pylori causes inflammation within the mucosa of the stomach which is known as gastritis. However, due to the arguable data in the literature, the relationship between H. Pylori and obesity remains debatable and there is no comprehensive proof for the association. Objective: To study the Prevalence and Relationship between Helicobacter pylori infection and Obesity. Methods: In this study 200 subjects were contributed, including 100 patients positive tested with H.pylori and 100 healthy participants with negative serological test for H. pylori infection. The data were collected in different places in the Kurdistan region of Iraq including Rizgary Hospital in Erbil and Alaa laboratory in Soran city and other places around Erbil Provence. The body mass index was calculated by measuring the weight in kg and length of participants in cm. Furthermore, all subjects filled in a self-administered questionnaire to collect more detailed data about the subjects. Descriptive and inferential statistics were obtained using statistical analysis programs including SPSS and GraphPad prism. Results: The prevalence of obesity is significantly higher in Helicobacter pylori-positive patients compared to the control in young age persons, and the result showed also that H. pylori positive group are consuming significantly more fast food and have a higher BMI compared to control group. Conclusion: Our result significantly indicates an association between H. Pylori infection and overweight/obesity examined in the case-control study in the Kurdish population.