LGR5 and gastritis: A variety of additional studies have since confirmed an expansion of the Lgr5+ stem cell pool in human H. pylori–positive gastritis or intestinal metaplasia, relative to H. pylori–negative normal gastric mucosa in geographically diverse patient cohorts (Levi et al, 2014; Choi et al, 2016; Walker et al, 2018; Saberi et al, 2019).