It's harder to eradicate Helicobacter pylori in smokers

Research question Does smoking affect treatment for Helicobacter pylori infection?

Answer Yes. Treatment is more likely to fail in smokers than in non-smokers.

Why did the authors do the study? Eradication fails in 10-20% of patients with H pylori infection. There's some evidence that treatment failure is more common among smokers, although the results are not entirely consistent. These authors wanted a more definitive answer, so they searched for all published studies reporting eradication rates among smokers and non-smokers then combined their results.

What did they do? They searched PubMed for all studies published up to August 2005. They included only those reported in English …