Mouth bacteria linked to pancreatic cancer

Emobileclinic Researchers’ Corner

Certain Mouth germs   are associated with pancreatic cancer as presented at the annual meeting of  American Association for Cancer. The author of the new study noted that previous studies showed that gum disease with associated symptoms like bleeding, swollen gums and greater number of missing teeth are linked with an increased in pancreatic cancer. So their study finds it odd to explain to how until they decided to look into oral bacteria noting that the micobiome in the mouth are over 600 of different species of bacteria.

semen quality pic

Pancreatic cancer has a high death rate as is often discovered at the advanced stage. The said association between pancreatic cancer and these bacteria are extremely high risk factor according to the author of the study; an associate prof of population health at NYU Langone Medical Center New York. She examined oral samples of 140,000  patients over a period of 10 years .These were people without pancreatic cancer at the beginning of the study. 361 later developed pancreatic cancer  while 371 people didn’t get the cancer. ”We compared the 361 ‘mouthwash’ samples to 371 people who did not get pancreatic cancer and figured out which bacteria were associated with an increased risk for pancreatic cancer ” she said.

They discovered that two bacteria raised the risk of  pancreatic cancer patients: Porphoyromonas gingival  and Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans. The two bacteria had 59% and 119% risk respectively  in the study and the author feels it has to do majorly with inflammation which is known to cause cancer. Both bacteria have been linked to periodontitis in the past studies which is a serious  gum infection.

semen quality pic

”This is the first study showing oral bacteria from the mouth is related to subsequent pancreatic cancer. This is just an association ,…we can’t definitely say this causes it. We need to be cautious,” she said. She advocated for more studies in this direction as it can also lead to a new way of quick discovery of pancreatic cancer. ” Pancreatic cancer is a dreadful disease. We want to find ways to detect it early and learn how to prevent this disease”,she said.

Dr Alison Klein,an associate prof at Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins Medical reacted to this study admitting that pancreatic cancer have limited risk factor ”so the more we learn ,the better”.

The author of the study and her colleague are however on the verge to found out more if the these oral bacteria are in the pancreastic  tissues at surgery of those patient with pancreatic cancer .

 

See also  Brimonidine, a Glaucoma drug found useful in treating Alzheimer's disease


Leave a Reply