Once someone has progressed to gastric intestinal metaplasia, does a urea breath test still detect h pylori?

Yes: The urea breath test is a rapid method to identify infections by Helicobacter pylori,implicated in gastritis, gastric ulcer, and eventual malignancy based upon the ability of H. pylori to convert urea to ammonia and carbon dioxide. The test measures active H. pylori infection. If antibiotics are depressing the amount of H. pylori present, or the stomach conditions are less acidic than normal, the amount of urease present will be lessened. In many untreated cases of malignancy the H.pylori levels are still relatively high with early malignancy,