Objective: This study aimed to investigate the annual, seasonal, and monthly trends in Helicobacter pylori (HP) positivity over ten years and to assess the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on diagnostic patterns. Method: A retrospective analysis was conducted on 17,091 gastric biopsies performed between 2015 and 2024.
HP infection was diagnosed histologically using toluidine blue staining. The data were classified by month, season, and year, and comparisons were made across the pre-pandemic (2015-2019), pandemic (2020-2021), and post-pandemic (2022-2024) periods.Results: The overall HP positivity rate was 29.1%. Positivity was significantly higher in males (30.3%) than in females (28.2%) (p=0.002), although the effect size was minimal.
Younger individuals had a significantly higher HP positivity rate (mean age: 49.0 vs. 54.1 years, p