Peptic
u l c e r i s a f a i r l y
common diges t i ve
cond it i on, and was
widely accepted to be
caused by stress and poor
diet. This was disproved in
1982, when Prof. Barry James
Marshall and his collaborator,
Dr. John Robin War ren successfully
identified the true cause for peptic ulcers and
cancer -
Helicobacter Pylori
, for which they were
awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology.
P rof. Ma r sha l l was exposed to anatomy,
physiology and biology dur ing his childhood,
being influenced by his mother, a nurse. In 1975,
he obtained his Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery
from the University of Western Australia, and began
his internship and residencies in internal medicine
at the Queen Elizabeth II Medical Centre shortly
afterward. He began his training as a specialist
physician in 1978, and was appointed as a registrar
in medicine at the Royal Perth Hospital in 1979. In his
third year of training, Prof. Marshall was encouraged
to perform a clinical research project, and it was
during this time that he met and collaborated
with Dr. Robin Warren, a pathologist at the time.
Together, they began their research on helical
microorganisms.
Prof. Marshall took an interest in understanding
the role of bacteria in stomach diseases after
meeting Dr. War ren, who had al ready begun
studying curved stomach bacteria. Together they
scrutinised the medical literature for any mention
of s tomach bacter ia. Numerous at tempt s to
culture spiral gastric bacteria were unsuccessful.
Fortunately, they struck gold one Easter weekend,
in 1982, when the slow-growing bacteria were
left to incubate in their Petri dishes. The pathogen
is now known as
Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori)
-
A Gamble
with Life
curved bacteria closely related
to a bacterium called Wollinella
succinoges, which survives in one
of the four stomachs of cows.
Despite this finding, much of Prof.
Marshall’s work was met with criticism
and d i sbe l i ef amongs t the sci ent i f i c
community. There was pressure to recreate his
results by infecting an animal model with bacteria
and attempts were unsuccessful; H. pylori is well-
adapted to the stomach environment of humans
and animal stomach environments are different.
Desperate to demonstrate the causative role of H.
pylori, Prof. Marshall drank a beaker of the culture
himself. Within the next few days, he fell seriously ill
with symptoms of nausea, vomiting and exhaustion,
precursors to a peptic ulcer. His stomach biopsies
confirmed that he had successfully infected himself
with a peptic ulcer, and perhaps more significantly,
he was able to cure himself with antibiotics.
Although the ground-breaking discovery caused
great reverberation, his hypotheses were still met
with scattered doubt. Much of it stemmed from the
disbelief that bacteria could survive in the strong
acidic environment of the stomach and the deep-
rooted theory that stomach ulcers were caused by
stress. Prof. Marshall explained that normal day-to-
day stress has little to do with ulcers but some ulcers
such as ‘stress ulcers’ are caused by severe trauma
‘stress’ such as injuries sustained from motor vehicle
accidents. Nevertheless, Prof. Marshall was able to
cure all peptic ulcer patients simply with antibiotics.
With the suppor t of the National Institutes of
Health (NIH), the medical community was finally
convinced; the discovery revolutionised the entire
treatment process of peptic ulcers.
Aside from the discover y of H. pylor i, Prof.
Marshall has since devised the Helicobacter breath
test for diagnosis. He now devotes his time on
investigating the epidemiology, genomics, and
