Introduction: Accumulating evidence indicate that pluripotency-associated transcription factors Sox2, Nanog and Oct4 that known as embryonic stem cell factors play a crucial role in the development and progression of various types of malignancies including gastric cancer. However, their expression and possible role gastritis has not been elucidated. As helicobacter (H) pylori infection has been known as a risk factor for gastric cancer and is the main cause of gastritis, in the current study we sought to determine the expression of these factors in gastric samples of patients with H. pylori-induced gastritis.

Materials and methods: In this study we infected the gastric epithelial cells (AGS) with H. pylori and evaluated the expression levels of Sox2, Nanog, and Oct4 in these cells with RT-PCR. In addition, the expression levels of these genes at mRNA levels were analyzed in biopsies of 49H pylori-infected with gastritis and 12 H. pylori-negative normal samples by qRT-PCR.

Results: Our data showed that H. pylori infection upregulates all three genes in AGS cells. However, biopsy samples from patients with H. pylori infection showed only slightly upregulation of these genes. More importantly, we observed that the levels of Sox2, Oct4 and Nanog is associated with the number of infiltrated inflammatory cells in gastric tissue of H. pylori positive patients, indicating that the expression of these factors is somehow depends on the levels of inflammation.

Conclusion: we demonstrate for the first time that infiltration of inflammatory cells is associated with the expression levels of embryonic stem cells factors in H. pylori infected tissues.