The tongue could help detect early pancreatic cancer



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If confirmed by larger studies, this could pave the way for the development of new early warning or prevention tools.

The the differences in abundance of certain bacteria that live on the tongue According to the results of a new detailed study in an article published in the Journal of Oral Microbiology, they can distinguish patients with early pancreatic cancer from healthy individuals.

Although alterations have already been identified in the microbiome (the population of microorganisms that live in and in our body) in patients with pancreatic cancer in other tissues of the body, is the first evidence of bacterial changes in the lining of the tongue.

If confirmed by larger studies, this could pave the way for the development of new tools for early detection or prevention to save the life of this very aggressive disease.

About 10,000 people are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the UK each year and less than 1% of them survive more than ten years.

A Early diagnosis can greatly improve the chances of successful treatmentbut that poses challenges for that pathology because it grows deep in the body and often, shows few symptoms before it's ever spread. As a result, most patients already have advanced pathology when they ask for medical help.

The scientists seek biological changes that can accurately detect early signs pancreatic cancer, which could become new screening tests. A topical subject is the potential role of the microbiome in the development of cancer, with previous studies that identify dramatic alterations of bacteria in saliva, intestinal and faecal samples obtained from patients with pancreatic cancer compared to healthy individuals.

In this study to characterize the microbiome of language coverage in patients with pancreatic cancer, a team of researchers recruited a group of 30 patients with early stage disease (diagnosed with a tumor located in the "head" of the pancreas) and a similar group of 25 healthy people. The participants were between 45 and 65 years old, had no other diseases or oral health problems and had not taken any antibiotics or other medications during the three months preceding the study.

DIFFERENT MICROBIOM

The team used sophisticated gene sequencing technologies to examine the diversity of microbiomes from the language envelope samples and found that the Patients with pancreatic cancer have been colonized by extremely different microbiomes compared to healthy individuals.

The main author, Lanjuan Li, from Zhenjiang University, China, objectives: "Although further confirmatory studies are needed, our results add to the growing evidence of an association between microbiome and pancreatic cancer alterations."

Surprisingly, the abundance of four types of bacteria (low levels of "Haemophilus" and "Porphyromonas" and high levels of "Leptotrichia" and "Fusobacterium") could distinguish patients with pancreatic cancer from healthy individuals. "If larger studies confirm an association between a discriminating bacterium and pancreatic cancer, this could lead to the development of new tools for the prevention or diagnosis of the disease based on microbiomes", Li says.

The research team assumes that the immune system is the most likely link between confirmed changes in the microbiome and pancreatic cancer, for example: the development of a disease in the pancreas can influence the immune response so as to promote the growth of certain bacteria, or vice versa. If it is tested, this could define the bases for the development of new treatment strategies including antibiotics or immunotherapies or even probiotics that can help prevent pancreatic cancer in high-risk patients in the future

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