This study was undertaken in healthy volunteers to determine the relation between serum levels of
pepsinogen A,
pepsinogen C,
pepsinogen A:C ratio, and
gastrin on the one hand and histology of the gastric mucosa on the other. The grade of
gastritis was scored separately for
antral and fundic mucosa by three different classifications: Whitehead, activity, and the Sydney score. Among 48 healthy volunteers studied, 17 were found to have
gastritis according to the criteria of Whitehead. Fourteen of these 17 subjects with
gastritis had H. pylori in gastric biopsies. In all 48 subjects serum
pepsinogen A (r = 0.298-0.506; P < 0.01-P < 0.05),
pepsinogen A:C ratio (r between -0.377 and -0.495; P < 0.001-P < 0.05) and
gastrin (r = 0.38-0.695; P = 0.007-P < 0.01) were significantly correlated to the severity of both
antral and body
gastritis as assessed by all three classifications. In contrast, there was no significant correlation between serum
pepsinogen C and any of the
gastritis scores. When the 17 subjects with
gastritis were analyzed separately, there were no correlations between the parameters studied and
gastritis of the antrum. Regarding the corpus mucosa, serum
PgA correlated significantly with the activity score (r = 0.520; P = 0.03), weakly with the Sydney score (r = 0.465; P = 0.06), but not with the Whitehead score. Serum PgC correlated with the Whitehead (r = 0.555; P = 0.02) and Sydney score (r = 0.523; P = 0.03), but only weakly with the activity score (r = 0.441; P = 0.08).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)