Introduction: In different recent researches high prevalence of Helicobacter pylori infectious in adult patient with ITP disease has been reported. Furthermore, the studies have referred to increase of platelet count in some patients after eradication therapy of this infection. This problem describes the probable role of H. pylori in the occurrence of adult ITP. However, studies done in this case are limited in the children age group. This study aimed to determine the relationship between H. pylori infection and idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura in hospitalized children in Amirkola Hospital 2012-2013.
Materials & methods: In this cross-sectional study, 88 children under 14 years old (44 case groups, 44 control group) were studied. They had been hospitalized with a diagnosis of idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura in Amirkola Hospital (2012-2013) and their H. pylori infection was positive by stool antigen method. They were considered as the case group, and also a similar number of healthy children who were brought by their parents to check up on the basis of clinical and laboratory to the Amirkola infectious clinic were the control group. Their gender and acute or chronic symptoms were recorded. Data were analyzed using the statistical software SPSS V18, descriptive statistics and Chi-square test, and the significant level was set at less than 0.05.
Findings: There were 88 children who were 42 boys (47.7%) and 46 girls (52.3%), respectively. The mean age of the children in this study was 5.97±3.75 years. Among the patients, 14 patients (15.9%) had positive H. pylori infection, and 74 patients (84.1%) had negative H. pylori infection. Among the positive ITP patients 13 patients (29.5%) had acute thrombocytopenic purpura and 31 patients (70.5%) had chronic thrombocytopenic purpura. There was no significant association between the case and control groups with gender (P=0.99). Also, H.pylori had no significant difference between two groups (P=0.77).
Discussion & conclusions: According to the results of this study, H. pylori infection has no relationship with idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura.