Helicobacter Forums

Hello,

I am a 26 yo male who believes I have an H. pylori infection however, my test result just came back today neg. (1st time testing)

I was wondering that if my stool was very liquidy/diarrhea like, and also black and tarry looking (which indicated blood), that the stool test may not be accurate?

My doctor prescribed me a PPI and I learned that you need to stop it and other antacids 2 weeks before testing to get accurate results. However, I did not start the PPI until the day after I sent in my stool sample. The day I started my PPI, my stool returned to relatively normal (not totally) since it was solid and no longer black and tarry.

Hoping someone will reply soon...

You can re confirm by doing blood test or breath test.

blood test usually tells you if you had H. pylori before. It cannot tell you if you had H. pylori now. However, a negative blood test is usually very accurate. A positive blood test can be because of your history. If you had not taken any antibiotics in the past 1-3 years, then the chance of false positive is low.

breath test is usually more preferable as it doesnt require the assessment of stool. However, due to the cost, not many developing countries have it.

Hello Helico_expert!
Thank you for the quick reply. I just solved a posting issue with admins yesterday who found that this topic was locked because of a glitch.

So do you know if sending in a stool sample that is mostly liquid and almost not solid at all (diarrheal) would affect test accuracy? It was also black and tarry so there was blood present.

I live in the US, so the UBT should be available if I ask for it.

unfortunately i am not expert in stool test. However, i would expect that an abnormal stool will affect the test outcome. Nevertheless if you want, you can always get another test done.