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Heliconda® – A Combination Therapy for the Treatment of Resistant Helicobacter pylori infection

Resistant Helicobacter pylori
Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) is a bacterium believed to infect around 50% of the population worldwide, making it one of the most common bacterial infections. H. pylori lives in the mucosal lining of the stomach and causes up to 90% of peptic ulcer disease. It is also associated with gastric cancer with the World Health Organisation classifying H. pylori as a carcinogen. Patients infected with H. pylori can experience symptoms such as burning pain in the upper abdomen, indigestion, nausea, vomiting and loss of appetite.

Current treatment for H. pylori infection focuses on eradicating the bacteria using a combination of antibiotics and a stomach acid suppressant. With the increased use of antibiotics to treat many infections and the resultant prevalence of antibiotic resistance, it has become more difficult to treat resistant strains of H. pylori infection. As a result, up to 30% of people fail these treatments and there is an unmet medical need in this area.

Heliconda®
Heliconda® is designed to address resistant H. pylori infection by incorporating the antibiotic rifabutin which has reported successful eradication rates in patients where all other available antibiotic regimens have failed. In addition to rifabutin, the Heliconda® combination includes amoxycillin and a stomach acid suppressant known as a proton pump inhibitor.

In a Phase II study of 130 patients with resistant H. pylori infection, Giaconda demonstrated successful eradication of the infection in 90.9% of patients treated with Heliconda® who had failed one or more H. pylori eradication attempts using standard triple antibiotic therapy. The presence of clarithromycin or metronidazole resistant strains had no significant impact on the eradication rates. In this study, Heliconda® demonstrated similar side-effects to conventional therapies and produced no serious adverse events.