Patients with corpus atrophic gastritis and antrum involvement may have antral healing at long term follow-up: real regression or sampling error?

Aims Corpus Atrophic Gastritis (CAG) is characterized by inflammation and oxyntic gland loss. CAG is defined as autoimmune when sparing antrum and as Helicobacter pylori (Hp)-related (multifocal) when antrum is involved. Possible antral healing has been supposed. Since antrum sparing is crucial for autoimmune gastritis diagnosis and implies a lowering of OLGA-OLGIM risk scores for gastric cancer, we aimed to analyse antral histology at long-term follow-up (FU) in patients with CAG and concomitant antral involvement.