Feed the GOOD BACTERIA in your gut to ward off cancer

That’s the suggestion from cutting-edge research showing that our gut bugs can help prevent the disease — and treat it

OVER t he p ast 1 8 m onths three of my friends have been diagnosed with prostate cancer and had surgery for it. Fortunately in each case the disease was caught before it spread, but even so it has been a very stressful time for them and their families.

And what is really worrying, is that due to C ovid, f ar f ewer m en w ith e arly s ymptoms, such as difficulty in starting to urinate, weak flow or blood in the urine, are coming forward to be tested.

This is now so serious that in a couple of weeks there will be a big campaign, ledbyProstate Cancer UK, to try to-reach these ‘missing men’.

All of which has made me reflect on my own situation. I am 64 and have a family history of prostate cancer.

My dad was told he had prostate cancer at around my age; so I tick two of the boxes (age and family history) for

the ‘at risk’ category. ethnicity is also a risk f actor, w ith B lack A frican a nd B lack Caribbean men twice as likely to be diagnosed with the disease.

But recent research points to another potential culprit when it comes to d eveloping particularly aggressive v ersions of the disease — our microbiome, the mix of microbes in our guts.

THeRe are at least 1,000 different species of microbes living in ou rguts, some of-which are essential for longterm h ealth ( from h elping o ur i mmunity to improving mood), while others can lead to chronic inflammation, which in turn can drive cancer.

There is, for example, a micro be known as Helicobacter pylori, which naturally infects many humans and which is now recognised as one of the leading causes

of stomach ulcers and gastric cancer, the second leading cause of cancer relateddeathsworldwide.

I have a particular interest in Helicobacter because, back in 1994, I made a documentary about this bug and the work of Professor Barry Marshall, a gut doctor who was the first to prove just how d angerous it is.

As part of his research he identified, cultured and then swallowed a beaker full of He li cob act er, causing inflammation in his own gut and the beginnings of an ulcer. He then cu red himself with a cocktail of antibiotics.

Although there was a lot of s cepticism when my documentary went out, Barry and his colleague Dr Robin Warren later won the Nobel Prize for their pioneering work. As well as Helicobacter, there are other microbes linked to cancers, including the human papillomavirus (HPV),which is-known to cause cervical cancer,-and hepatitis viruses which can-cause liver cancer.

And now gut microbes are being linked to prostate cancer, which opens up the possibility of new ways of helping reduce the risk.

In a study published last October, scientists from the Cleveland Clinic, Ohio, in the U.S. analysed blood samples from 700 patients in a prostate cancer screening trial and found that men with higher level sofa substance called phenyl ace ty l glut amine( PAGln) at the time of screening were nearly three times more likely to develop lethal prostate cancer than men with lower levels.

PAG ln is produced when-microbes in your gut break down an amino acid called phenylalanine, which is found in foods such as meat, beans and soy.

Higher levels of PAGln lead to chronic inflammation, which in turn leads to a higher risk of heart disease and cancer.

The scientists now plan to test different dietary interventions to see which, if any, help reduce the risk of developing aggressive forms of the disease.

In a second study, this time by the Institute of Cancer Research in London, researchers looked at the effect of specific gut microbes on how w ell m en w ith p rostate c ancer respond to hormone treatment. This works bylowering level so fan drogens, male hormones known to drive the disease.

The researchers collected stool samples from 74 men who were

being treated for prostate cancer at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust in London. Some of these patients were responding to hormone therapy, others weren’t.

The researchers found that a specificbacterium— Ruminococcus — seemed to be fuelling the growth of the prostate cancer and

making it more resistant to treatment, possibly undermining the-effectiveness of the hormone t herapy by making their own growth-promoting androgens.

The good news was that having higher levels of another bacterium — Prevotella stercorea — led to better outcomes. The hope is that, in future, testing a patient’s stool

samples will help identify those at high risk of developing resistance to treatment and who might then benefit from having their microbiome boosted by healthy bacteria.

This could come in the form of a drink, or even a faecal transplant — where stool samples from a healthy donor are treated and then inserted directly into a patient’s bowel.

These findings add to a mounting body of evidence showing the close link between microbes and cancer. As some of you might recall, I wrote recently about new research showing that eating a Mediterranean diet, rich in veg and oily fish, has been shown to boost levels of anti-inflammatory microbes that live in women’s breasts. This in turn appears to reduce the risk of breast cancer.

For me the take home message from all this is the importance, yet again, of a healthy diet and should

I develop any of the obvious s ymptoms of prostate problems, I will pester my GP for a test.