The occurrence and development of gastric cancer is a multi-step and gradual process. Reasonable screening and risk prediction of high-risk groups of gastric cancer, and dynamic follow-up have always been key steps in the process of early diagnosis and treatment of gastric cancer. Serum pepsinogen assay is one of the non-invasive tests. It was reported that the serum pepsinogen assay was better than the serum gastrin assay when measuring the gastric mucosal state because gastrin is mainly produced by the endocrine G cells of the gastric antrum (9, 10). Yoshida et al followed a cohort of 4655 healthy asymptomatic subjects for 16 years and came to the conclusion that the serum PG assay was useful for the screening of GC, especially for the intestinal-type GC (11). Yanaoka et al conducted a cohort study of 5209 middle-aged male subjects for 10 years and concluded that subjects with a low PG I/II ratio are at high risk of GC and a thorough endoscopy is required for them (12). Japanese scholar Miki first adopted the ABC method for clinical risk assessment of early gastric cancer. This method combines the detection of serum HP antibody and serum pepsinogen to determine the high-risk population that may develop into gastric cancer in the future (13). However, it was found that the method was mainly for tumors located at gastric body and fundus during the application process, which made it easy to miss tumors of gastric antrum. Thus, in 2015, the new ABC method was first proposed at the International Symposium on Early Gastric Cancer Screening in China. The new ABC method replaces the serum HP antibody in the ABC method with serum G-17. Subsequent research results also showed that the new ABC method could improve the sensitivity and specificity of early gastric cancer screening in the Chinese population compared with the ABC method (14). But when it came to the best cut-off value, there were still differences in different regions. Cai Q et al (15) developed a novel risk prediction rule to further stratify risk for GC in the Chinese GC risk population. It quantified various risk factors such as age, gender, HP antibody and serum gastric secretion function for the first time. Based on the risk prediction rule, the strategy of precise endoscopic examination should be adopted for people at high risk of gastric cancer and appropriate follow-up strategy should be adopted for people at low risk, which improves screening efficiency and saves medical resources.
However, the esophagogastroduodenoscopy is an irreplaceable part for gastric status and risk prediction of gastric cancer. Endoscopic gastritis was proven by Schindler who used gastroscope to observe the gastric mucosa for the first time and proposed the existence of endoscopic gastritis in 1930s (16). In 1960s, Kimura Takemoto established the diagnostic criteria of atrophic gastritis and described the appearance of an atrophic transitional zone of gastritis, which was known as the endoscopic atrophic border for the first time (17). The Kimura-Takemoto classification was published in 1969 and is still an indispensable method for the diagnosis and classification of gastritis in Japan. In 1983, HP was found in the gastric mucosa of patients with gastritis by Warren and Marshall et al. (18), which completely changed the strategy of gastritis classification. Therefore, the Sydney System for the classification of gastritis was proposed (19, 20). It took consideration of the position of gastritis, histopathological results and endoscopic status. Later the Operative Link on Gastric Intestinal Metaplasia (OLGIM) classification was promoted to predict the risk of GC focusing on intestinal metaplasia (21). The Kyoto classification of gastritis, advocated at the 85th Congress of the Japan Gastroenterological Endoscopy Society, adopts more objective gastroscopy results, such as atrophy, intestinal metaplasia, enlarged fold, nodularity and diffuse redness (Fig. 4), to establish a global standard for gastritis classification. The efficacy of Kyoto classification of gastritis to GC risk prediction have been proven by Sugimoto, Shichijo, Sakitani and Fujimoto et al (22–25).
Although upper gastrointestinal endoscopy allows doctors to estimate the risk of gastric cancer based on the findings of the background gastric mucosa, the secretion capacity of gastric mucosa is also significant for the risk prediction. None of the researches mentioned above took demographic factor, serum pepsinogen and endoscopic features into consideration to build up a statistical model to visualize the prediction. Hence, this research was conducted. This study demonstrated that patients background data, such as age and sex, as well as PG I/II ratio and Kyoto classification scores are independently associated with GC risk. Nomograms have been adopted and proven to be useful in prediction (26). The monogram formulated based on these factors was excellent, with C-index of 0.79 and calibration curve of optimal agreement between predicted probability and observed probability. Old age and male sex are independent factor for GC, which is consistent with the previous study of Kaneko et al (27). The higher the Kyoto classification scores were, the more risk were the subjects to GC with the OR of 1.48, which is concordant with the findings of Sugimoto et al (22). The significance of the study is that demographic factors, such as age and sex, and serological indicators of pepsinogen were considered and combined with Kyoto classification of gastritis to build up a novel nomogram model, which made the prediction more visible. Predicting the lesion type before pathological diagnosis of biopsy could determine the concentration of endoscopist and lead to a more careful and thorough endoscopy. As for each item of Kyoto classification of gastritis, atrophy, intestinal metaplasia, enlarged fold and diffuse redness were positive correlated with GC, but nodularity showed no association with GC. This result is also corresponding to the finding of Sugimoto and Toyoshima (22, 28).
However, there are still some limitations of this study. It was found that HP antibody had no meaning in predicting gastric cancer in our cohort. We assumed that it was because a large-scale population-based HP screening and eradication had been carried out in our region, which made HP antibody unable to reflect the status of HP infection. Furthermore, this study was a retrospective and single-center study. The validation set of the nomogram came from the part of the whole subjects which were divided randomly using bootstrap method. Thus, an external validation was required to further validate the nomogram. In addition, further investigations using prospective study designs are required to evaluate the accuracy and discriminative ability of the nomogram model.