What is the cause of atrophic gastritis with intestinal metaplasia

Gastrointestinal inflammation often brings great pain to patients, causing great impact on their daily life. In particular, some rare and severe gastroenteritis are the most harmful. For example, atrophic gastritis with intestinal metaplasia is a relatively serious symptom, which brings great trouble to patients. So, what is the cause of atrophic gastritis with intestinal metaplasia? What is pathology?

Causes:

Chronic atrophic gastritis is a chronic digestive system disease caused by long-term chronic inflammation of the stomach, which is characterized by atrophy of the gastric mucosal epithelium and glands, decrease in number, thinning of the gastric mucosa, and thickening of the mucosal base. Atrophic gastritis is often accompanied by intestinal metaplasia, which refers to the replacement of gastric mucosal epithelial cells by intestinal epithelial cells, that is, the appearance of epithelial cells in the gastric mucosa that are similar to the mucosa of the small intestine or large intestine.

pathology:

Intestinal metaplasia can be divided into complete or incomplete intestinal metaplasia according to the function of the metaplastic epithelium. Complete intestinal metaplasia is similar to the absorptive cells of the small intestinal mucosa, has a brush border, and does not secrete mucus. It is also called small intestinal type intestinal metaplasia. Incomplete intestinal metaplasia has an unclear brush border, underdeveloped microvilli, and mucus secretion granules in the cytoplasm, which is also called colonic intestinal metaplasia.

Intestinal metaplasia, with its well-differentiated epithelium, is a common mucosal lesion that is widely seen in various benign gastric diseases (57.8%), especially chronic gastritis. As the inflammation progresses, metaplasia also worsens, so it is believed that intestinal metaplasia may be an inflammatory response. On the other hand, colonic metaplasia, with its poorly differentiated epithelium, has a lower detection rate in benign gastric diseases, about 10%, but its detection rate in the mucosa adjacent to intestinal gastric cancer is as high as about 90%, indicating that colonic metaplasia is closely related to the occurrence of gastric cancer.

Generally, colonic metaplasia occurs later than intestinal metaplasia and is located in the more severe small intestinal metaplasia foci. The two types of metaplasia can coexist, so colonic metaplasia may occur on the basis of gradually worsening small intestinal metaplasia.