Colorectal cancer is the third most commonly diagnosed type of cancer in men and the second most common in women.
Surgery, chemotherapy, immune therapy, and radiation therapy all carry the possibility of significant treatment-related morbidity and mortality. In particular, adverse events affecting the gastrointestinal tract such as nausea, diarrhea, colitis, and gastrointestinal bleeding can diminish a patient’s quality of life, preclude additional treatment, and sometimes even become life hreatening.
There is a latest cure of this filthy Colorectal cancer through manipulation of human microbiota. This refers to the 10 to 100 trillion symbiotic microbial cells harbored by each individual largely located in the gut where they are involved with metabolizing food remnants, intestinal and digestive secretions, and exfoliated colonocytes. The human microbiome, in turn, refers to the genes contained by these cells . The microbiota serves a myriad of roles in the body with both positive and negative effects on human health and several large ongoing projects exist to explore this complex interplay.The microbiome is extremely diverse between individuals. The entire human genome consists of approximately 22,000 genes. This is compared to the human gut microbiome, which contains 3.3 million non-redundant genes that vary between individuals.
Natural sources which confer anti-carcinogenic effects for the prevention of colon cancer, such as probiotics, have been receiving important focus in recent years.
Several species of probiotic bacteria also produce conjugated linoleic acids from linoleic acid. The fatty acids produced by these bacteria can act into the colonocytes by exerting antiproliferative and proapoptotic activities with locally beneficial effect.
Nevertheless, it has been widely demonstrated that the regular consumption of probiotics can reduce intestinal permeability by changing the distribution of cell junction protein and decreasing the amount of potential carcinogenic compounds absorbed and acting negatively on the colonocytes. Treatment with a mixture of probiotics (L. plantarum, L. acidophilus and B. longum) in individuals with CRC improved the outcome and increased the amount of cell junction proteins (claudin, occludin, and JAM-1) as well as their distribution throughout the colonic epithelium.
SEVERAL PROBIOTICS AND THEIR ANTICANCER EFFECTS
NAME |
EFFECT |
STUDY MODEL |
Lactobacillus acidophilus |
Promotion of epithelial repair and barrier |
Animal/Human |
Bifidobacterium longum |
Improvement of adverse events during chemotherapy and radiation therapy |
Human |
Lactobacillus plantarum |
Increased tumor cells apoptosis |
Animal/Human |
Lactobacillus casei |
Production of metabolites with positive effects on the epithelium and immune cells (SCFAs, acetate, propionate, butyrate |
Animal/Human |
CONCLUSION
The consumption of some selected probiotics can contribute to the prevention of Colorectal cancer by exerting anti carcinogenic activity by potential physiological mechanisms that are usually host-dependent and strain-specific. Recent findings also suggest that some probiotics can alleviate adverse symptoms related to anticancer therapy.
AUTHOR : DR MUHAMMAD ASHRAF
CO AUTHOR : DR JOHN ABBAS