Oral Bacteria Found Predominantly Associated with Human Colorectal Cancer Cells

By Ramadhani Chambuso

The same oral commensal bacterium and gum disease pathogen called Fusobacterium nucleatum was found to be predominantly associated with primary human colorectal cancer cells and even in distant metastatic lesions, a study published in 2017 on the journal Science, reports. Furthermore, it was proven in mice with colon cancer that after treatment with antibiotics, Fusobacteruim load, cancer cell proliferation and overall tumour growth, all were reduced, which indicates that this organism may play a crucial role in colon cancer development.

Despite other studies suggesting the possible pro-tumorigenic role of Fusobacterium which may include modulation of host immune response to cancer cells and further enhancement of tumour cell invasion in colon cancer pathogenesis, this new study was scientifically able to show the correlation between decrease in Fusobacterium load and the decreased in rate of tumour growth and improved overall patient survival.

Although it is not clear yet if good oral hygiene would probably add advantage to preventive measures to colorectal cancer outcome, these scientists recommended the use of antibiotic Metronidazole, Fusobacterium–specific antimicrobial agents or phage therapy concurrently in colon cancer treatment. This is because broad-spectrum antibiotics may risk other gut microbial balance and did not show any additional effects on tumour growth control in their study.

Source: Bullman et al. (2017), Mima et al. (2015).

Hormonal Contraceptives may Increase a Woman’s Risk of Breast Cancer

By Ramadhani Chambuso

The risk of breast cancer was elevated among women who used hormonal contraceptives than among women who had never used them before, a study suggests, published in December, 2017 on the top journal in human Medicine, New England Journal of Medicine.

The study was done in Denmark, followed up 1.8 million women for 10.9 years who used hormonal birth control methods and only 11,517 cases of breast cancer occurred. Furthermore, when compared with women who have never used any hormonal control pills, the risk of breast cancer increased up to 38% depending on duration of use from less than 1 year to more than 10 years in all forms of hormonal contraception methods such as the pills, injections or hormone releasing-Intra Uterine Devices (IUDs).

However, the overall absolute increased risk in breast cancers diagnosed among current and recent users of any hormonal contraceptive was 13%, approximately 1 extra breast cancer for every 7690 women using hormonal contraception for 1 year.

Although these findings sound scary, on the other hand, the risk is somehow similar to the breast cancer risk contributed by physical inactivity, excessive weight gain, or alcohol consumption. However, all these extra contributing factors for breast cancer risk were not excluded in this study.

In contrary, oral contraceptives use, prevents more cancers than it causes. For example, it is known to reduce the risk of ovarian cancer, endometrial cancer and there is a strong suggestion that they may also reduce the risk of colorectal cancer.

In my opinion, this should be weighed against the clear benefits of hormonal contraception use that go beyond the obvious advantages of preventing unwanted pregnancies. In addition, the search for new hormonal contraceptives that do not elevate breast cancer risk or use of copper IUDs should be alternatively emphasized.

Source:  Mørch et al. (2017).

My Cancer Research Journey as a Story

By Ramadhani Chambuso

In clinical medicine, researchers believe that HIV/HPV co-infected women progress relatively rapidly to invasive cervical cancer.

But then, I thought that may be too general because others do not progress to the invasive disease regardless of their CD4 T cell counts or Anti-Retroviral drug use.

Therefore, what I did, was to find out if host immunity and molecular genetic variations with HIV/HPV co-infection may influence early cervical cancer development. Interestingly, I have discovered that specific immune genes in combination with HIV/HPV co-infection may influence cervical cancer development in South African Women.

Conclusively, these results enlighten our insight to the disease development, add new knowledge to the existing theories in Clinical Oncology and may change the screening and management of the disease to focus or target more on individualized molecular genetic variations for cervical carcinogenesis.