Editorial: Dissecting the immunological, pathological, and clinical aspects of autoimmune gastritis and its neoplastic complications

Editorial on the Research TopicDissecting the immunological, pathological, and clinical aspects of autoimmune gastritis and its neoplastic complications Autoimmune gastritis (AIG) is a non-self-limiting, chronic, inflammatory disorder of the stomach causing progressive atrophy of the oxyntic mucosa which, in turn, leads to vitamin B12, iron, and other micronutrient deficiencies and eventually to neoplastic progression, namely gastric cancer and type 1 gastric neuroendocrine tumors (1).Our understanding about AIG epidemiology, pathophysiology, and clinical aspects has been deeply advanced over the last decades, although many gaps remain to be filled.Notably, this Research Topic includes five original and innovative articles, three of them focusing on inflammation-related issues and due of them focusing on items related to neoplastic risk.The first study (Lenti et al.) provides an answer to an important, unanswered question of the natural history of AIG, namely whether there is a histopathological marker of potential AIG, reliably predicting the evolution of anti-parietal cells antibody (APCA)-positive patients and without gastric histopathological alterations into overt AIG, i.e. atrophy of the oxyntic mucosa.A previous study showed that the definitive evolution from potential into overt AIG may occur in about 50% of patients over a median observation period of eight years (2).By thoroughly assessing the intraepithelial lymphocyte (IEL) infiltration in the gastric corpus of potential AIG patients as compared to patients controls (H.pylori gastritis, celiac disease, Frontiers in Immunology frontiersin.org01