Histological maturity of healed duodenal ulcer and ulcer recurrence after treatment with omeprazole or cimetidine

We investigated the relationship between histological maturity of healed duodenal ulcer and ulcer recurrence after treatment with omeprazole or cimetidine for 4 weeks. The healing rates, 92.5 and 72.4% in omeprazole-treated and cimetidine-treated groups, respectively, showed no significant difference between groups (P > 0.05). Histologically, the regenerating mucosa of healed ulcer was divided into three categories: good, fair and poor patterns. Of the healed cases, 22 (59.5%) of 37 omeprazole-treated and 12 omeprazole-treated and 12 (28.6%) of 42 cimetidine-treated ulcers achieved a good pattern, showing significant difference between groups (P = 0.01). The recurrence rate at 3 months showed statistically significant difference (P <0.05) between two groups: 5.4% in omeprazole-treated and 23.8% in cimetidine-treated patients. During the period between 3 and 6 months after healing, the difference in recurrence rate between omeprazole-treated and cimetidine-treated groups was statistically not significant (12.5% and 25%, respectively, P > 0.05), though the cumulative recurrence rate at 6 months showed a significant difference between groups (17.6% vs 44.7%, P = 0.027). All the recurrent cases of both groups had a fair or poor pattern of regenerating mucosa. The difference in recurrence rate was statistically significant between the healed ulcers with a good pattern and that with a fair or poor patterns both at 3 months and between 3 and 6 months after healing (P <0.001 in each). We concluded that better histological maturity of regenerating mucosa may contribute to the lower early recurrence in omeprazole-treated cases than in cimetidine-treated cases.