MUC2 and gastritis: Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) is well known as a risk factor for gastritis and gastric intestinal metaplasia (IM) (Scida et al., 2018; Zheng et al., 2022), which has been regarded as a precancerous lesion in the H. pylori-induced metaplasia-dysplasia-carcinoma sequence characterized by enhanced caudal-related homeobox 2 (CDX2) and/or mucin 2 (MUC2) expression (Chen et al., 2021; Chen et al., 2020).