Prevalence of Gastritis in a Rural Population

The state of the gastric body mucosa was examined bioptically in randomly selected 16-65-year-old subjects of a Finnish rural community, Pornainen. The series were representative of the whole population as regards sex, age, and occupational distribution.Gastritis was found in 53 per cent of the series, with no difference between the sexes, being superficial in 25 per cent and atrophic in 28 per cent. The prevalence rate of gastritis increased significantly with age, 1.40±0.10 (SD) yearly per cent of the total group of corresponding age. This increase was mainly due to the increase of atrophic gastritis, whereas the prevalence of superficial gastritis remained nearly constant. The results suggest a poor healing tendency of gastritis in general and of atrophic gastritis in particular. The yearly increase in the prevalence rate of atrophic gastritis at all ages examined, was computed to 1.25±0.19 (SD) per cent of the total group of corresponding age.The age-specific prevalence rates of gastritis have not an exponential distributon, which suggests that there may be some inherent age factors which predispose to the high preivalencerate of gastritis in elder people.The time necessary for the transition of superficial gastritis into atrophic gastritis was computed to about 19 years. The corresponding time obtained from the previous follow-up examinations of the authors was about 17 years.