Atrophic gastritis and intestinal metaplasia are two important precursory lesions of intestinal type gastric cancer. A research group in China investigated the progression of atrophic gastritis and intestinal metaplasia in a high risk population for gastric cancer, and found interleukin-8 and migration inhibitory factor gene polymorphisms increased the risk of atrophic gastritis and intestinal metaplasia dramatically, this may provide great potential to prevention of gastric cancer.