In this issue

Excerpt

This month’s issue opens with a practice oriented paper on the differential diagnosis of chronic gastritis, with a focus on Helicobacter Pylori negative cases. In daily practice, all pathologists dealing with gastric biopsies regularly have to ask the question ‘what is the origin of this chronic inflammation, as I cannot identify a bacterial cause?’ El-Zimayti et al. (https://​doi.​org/​10.​1007/​s00428-018-2454-6) cover this issue in depth and systematically. They develop an algorithm allowing assignment of the majority of such cases to a specific diagnostic category. The differential diagnoses include lymphocytic gastritis, inflammatory bowel disease, vasculitis, granulomatous diseases, cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr virus, and non-HP bacterial infections. Only when these have been excluded, a diagnosis of idiopathic chronic gastritis is deemed justified. …