Might Bacterial Infection Cause Colorectal Cancer?

Infectious agents trigger liver, cervical, gastric, and nasopharyngeal carcinomas, as well as some lymphomas. Two research groups, one based in British Columbia and one in Massachusetts, now independently report a strong association between Fusobacterium species and colorectal cancer.

Researchers in both groups studied paired samples of colon cancer tissue and normal noncancerous adjacent colon. One group looked for nonhuman DNA, and the other looked for nonhuman RNA. They both found that Fusobacterium species, particularly F. nucleatum, were much more prevalent in colorectal tumors than in healthy colon. One group also found Fusobacterium species nucleic acids in some colorectal cancer metastases.