Furazolidone susceptibility of Helicobacter pylori isolated from patients with gastroduodenal diseases in Colombia

Estimates suggest that over 50% of the global population suffer from Helicobacter pylori infections. Nowadays, first-line quadruple therapy is recommended to eradicate the bacteria due to the increasing failures of the standard triple therapy. Thus, antibiotics such as furazolidone have emerged as a new treatment due to their success rate (>90%) in rescue therapies. Nevertheless, furazolidone is not routinely used for treatment of H. pylori in Colombia. Still, some Asian countries commonly prescribe it. This study aimed to determine the susceptibility of H. pylori to furazolidone in isolates from patients with gastroduodenal diseases in Colombia that were extracted from 2019-2022. A descriptive study was carried out with 179 patients with gastroduodenal diseases. Susceptibility was determined by the agar dilution method. The gene oorD from resistant isolates was amplified by polymerase chain reaction, and their PCR products were sequenced. The frequency of H. pylori equaled 23.5% (42/179); the bacterium was isolated in 84 gastric biopsies. Moreover, 1.7% (3/179) of patients had one resistant isolate to furazolidone in at least one of the two gastric biopsies, corresponding to 5.95% (5/84) of the isolates resisting furazolidone. Overall, three new mutations in the oorD gene occurred in one isolate, and two of the mutations in the five isolates had been reported in Iran, Brazil, and China. This research found low in vitro resistance of H. pylori isolates to furazolidone in Colombia. Finally, all five isolates showed mutations in the oorD gene.