The over-usage of antimicrobial compounds has led to an increase of H. pylori resistance to antibiotics and consequent failure in treatment therapy [1, 2]. In accordance with the Maastricht Consensus in Europe, the recommended therapy for H. pylori eradication in the stomach mucosa is the use of a proton pump inhibitor associated with two antibiotics, such as metronidazole, amoxicillin or clarithromycin for a 7-14 days period [3]. This therapy, although highly effective, is unselectively proposed to all patients and can imply serious discomfort to patients due to Combretastatin A4 chemical structure side effects of the antibiotics. Clarithromycin resistance is one of the most prevalent and can reach up

to 20% in Southern European countries [1]. The resistance is associated with point mutations in the peptidyltransferase region encoded in domain V of the H. pylori 23S rRNA gene [2, 4, 5]. The three most prevalent point mutations are the transitions A2142G and A2143G and the transversion A2142C [1, 2, 4]. Until

now, the antibiotic susceptibility has been detected in clinical laboratories by several phenotypical methods such as the agar dilution method, as recommended by the National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards (NCCLS) [6], or the alternative E-test that is considered to be more simple [7–10]. However, these methods are fastidious, MK0683 order time consuming [11], and fail to give any information about the point mutation within the sample [3]. Therefore, molecular methods for the detection of clarithromycin resistance in H. pylori have been developed during the last several years in order to overcome these shortcomings. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) followed by sequencing or reverse hybridization, Real-Time PCR and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) with DNA probes are some examples [2, 9,

12, 13]. When compared to PCR-based methods, the FISH technique presents some advantages since it is not so easily affected by DNA contamination, and allows for direct visualization of bacteria in the gastric biopsy specimens [1, 2]. Recently, peptide nucleic acid (PNA) probes using Selleckchem Docetaxel FISH have been designed and optimized for the detection of several bacteria, such as Enterobacter sakazakii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Eschericia coli [14, 15]. PNA molecules are DNA mimics that have the negatively charged sugar-phosphate backbone replaced by an achiral, neutral polyamide backbone formed by repetitive N-(2-aminoethyl) glycine units [16, 17]. Although PNA lacks pentoses, specific hybridization between the PNA sequences and nucleic acid complementary sequences still occur according to the Watson-Crick rules [18, 19]. The neutral PNA molecule characteristic is responsible for a higher thermal stability (high Tm) between PNA/DNA or PNA/RNA bonding, compared with the traditional DNA probes [17].