Widespread screening, however, raises questions about whom to treat. Although preventive measures would benefit people who otherwise would go on to develop ulcers or cancer, most infected people never develop any symptoms. The drug regimen to kill the bacterium is expensive perhaps prohibitively so in the countries with the largest numbers of people infected with H. pylori . Widespread treatment also might speed development of antibiotic resistance among bacteria. Most physicians don't yet recommend widespread screening for H. pylori among people who have no symptoms of stomach ailments.
Several vaccines are now under development.
If doctors screen for the microbe and treat those who are infected or if a vaccine is developed and widely used, H. pylori 's disappearance is likely to accelerate, warns Blaser. Unlike many physicians, he recommends against testing for and treating H. pylori infection in people with stomach pain but no proven ulcer. H. pylori can be good or bad, depending on context. Just at the time that we've finally started to convince people that this bug causes gastric cancer, this doubt is stopping us from going on and aggressively eradicating this disease. Today, asymptomatic cases are still treated aggressively.