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First-degree relatives of patients with gastric cancer have an increased risk for developing premalignant conditions, such as intestinal metaplasia. Endoscopic surveillance is recommended for these relatives. The identification of noninvasive markers could decrease the need for endoscopy in this at-risk population.
Investigators in a region of Iran with a high prevalence of gastric cancer performed endoscopies and took biopsy samples from the antrum and corpus of 481 first-degree relatives of patients with gastric cancer. Serum levels of pepsinogen I, pepsinogen II, and gastrin 17 were measured.
For both the antrum and corpus, pepsinogen II serum levels were increased in the presence of gastritis (6.6 µg/mL for normal mucosa, 9.5 µg/mL for an…