[Helicobacter pylori diagnosis in children with recurrent abdominal pain].

We studied 40 children with recurrent abdominal pain during a period of six months (january to june 1993) entered at the gastroenterology service of the Instituto Nacional de Pediatria in México City. In all of then we performed in all of them an upper gastrointestinal endoscopy with 3 biopsies from gastric mucosa (antrum) for histological examination and urease tests. We also did an ELISA test looking for an H. Pylori specific serum IgG response. Our control group were 40 healthy children in whom we did only the ELISA test. We did not find any statistics differences between the histologic findings (gold standard) and the urease and ELISA tests. With IgG antibodies prevalence for H. Pylori in children with recurrent abdominal pain were 57% in contrast with our control group in whom the prevalence was 5%.