New study below.
Popular interest in the gut microbiome is probably due to Dr. David Perlmutter, a neurologist & author of "Brain Maker: The Power of Gut Microbes to Heal and Protect Your Brain–for Life" (2015) [2].
One might ask if there is more to this than taking a daily probiotic, or even a prebiotic - after all, Perlmutter is involved in a range of Garden of Life probiotic products?
Inevitably, "Brain Maker" spawned a number of diet books.
With more alien cells in the body than human cells, perhaps we should pay attention to the dietary needs of the microbiome? LOL
The new pilot study (20 men) reported that:
"Higher relative abundance of Bacteriodes {sic} massiliensis was seen in prostate cancer cases compared to controls. Faecalibacterium prausnitzii and Eubacterium rectalie had higher relative abundance among controls. Biologically significant differences were also found in relative gene, pathway, and enzyme abundance."
Faecalibacterium prausnitzii is of interest to me, since, by fermentation of certain indigestible fiber it can produce butyrate. See my post of a year ago:
"Foods/Supplements-Vitamins: Butyric Acid, Butyrate, Sodium Butyrate - Butter"
"Sodium butyrate ... the sodium salt of butyric acid ... has various effects on cultured mammalian cells including inhibition of proliferation, induction of differentiation and induction or repression of gene expression." [3].
Those who stay away from butter must rely on fiber fermentation.
Sodium butyrate is available as a supplement.
...
On a related topic, here is a recent medical hypothesis [4] - the title says it all:
"Dying for love: Perimenopausal degeneration of vaginal microbiome drives the chronic inflammation-malignant transformation of benign prostatic hyperplasia to prostatic adenocarcinoma."
-Patrick
[1] ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/288...
Urology. 2017 Sep 6. pii: S0090-4295(17)30957-3. doi: 10.1016/j.urology.2017.08.039. [Epub ahead of print]
The Role of Gut Microbiome in the Pathogenesis of Prostate Cancer: a Prospective, Pilot Study.
Golombos DM1, Ayangbesan A2, O'Malley P3, Lewicki P2, Barlow L2, Barbieri CE2, Chan C4, DuLong C4, Abu-Ali G5, Huttenhower C5, Scherr DS2.
Author information
1
Department of Urology, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York Presbyterian Hospital, New York, NY, USA. Electronic address: dgolombos@gmail.com.
2
Department of Urology, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York Presbyterian Hospital, New York, NY, USA.
3
Department of Urology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
4
Department of Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
5
Department of Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA; Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Abstract
OBJECTIVE:
To elucidate potential biomarkers or mechanistic principles involved with the gut microbiota and its impact on prostate cancer pathogenesis.
MATERIALS AND METHODS:
A prospective case-control pilot study evaluating the gut microbiome of 20 men with either benign prostatic conditions (n = 8) or intermediate/high risk clinically localized prostate cancer (Gleason ≥4+3 cN0M0) (n = 12) undergoing care at tertiary referral center from 9/1/2015 - 3/1/2016. Key exclusion criteria included recent antibiotic use, significant GI disorders, hormonal or systemic therapy for prostate cancer. Computational genomics analysis was performed on collected stool samples using MetaPhlAn2 and HUMAnN2 platforms. Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) effect size (LEfSe) method was used to support high-dimensional class comparisons to find biologically relevant features. Kruskal-Wallis sum-rank test was used to detect features with significant differential abundance with respect to class, with biological consistency investigated using a set of pairwise tests among subclasses using the Wilcoxon rank-sum test, both to an α ≤0.05.
RESULTS:
Higher relative abundance of Bacteriodes massiliensis was seen in prostate cancer cases compared to controls. Faecalibacterium prausnitzii and Eubacterium rectalie had higher relative abundance among controls. Biologically significant differences were also found in relative gene, pathway, and enzyme abundance.
CONCLUSIONS:
Biologically significant differences exist in the gut microbial composition of men with prostate cancer compared to benign controls. These differences may play a role in the pathobiology of prostate cancer, and warrant further exploration.
Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Inc.
KEYWORDS:
Biomarkers; Genomics analysis; Microbiome; Next generation sequencing; Prostate cancer
PMID: 28888753 DOI: 10.1016/j.urology.2017.08.039
...
[2] amazon.com/Brain-Maker-Micr...
Article: ‘Gut bugs’ can drive prostate cancer growth and treatment resistance
