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 Could your gut flora play a role in cancer growth? According to recent research, the answer is a tentative yes.

 Findings published in the journal
Nature report the discovery of microbial-dependent mechanisms through which some cancers mount an inflammatory response that fuels their development and growth. These findings provide new insight into how cancer cells can hijack your body’s inflammatory reaction by exploiting microbial-dependent immune cells.

 As reported by
Medical News Today:

     “The association between chronic inflammation and tumor development has long been known from the early work of German pathologist Rudolph Virchow. Harvard University pathologist Harold Dvorak later compared tumors with ‘wounds that never heal,’ noting the similarities between normal inflammation processes that characterize wound- healing and tumorigenesis or tumor-formation.

     Indeed, 15 to 20 percent of all cancers are preceded by chronic inflammation – a persistent immune response that can target both diseased and healthy tissues… Still, most cancers are not preceded by chronic inflammation.

     On the other hand, they exploit ubiquitous, infiltrating immune cells to unduly provoke and hijack the host inflammatory reaction. Until now, the mechanism of so-called ‘tumor-elicited inflammation,’ which is detected in most solid malignancies, was poorly explained.

     ‘The tumor-associated inflammatory reaction… may hold the keys for future preventive and therapeutic measures,’ said first author Sergei Grivennikov, Ph.D

     Noting that studies of long-term users of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, such as aspirin, have revealed that general inhibition of inflammation reduces the risk of cancer death by up to 45 percent, depending on the type of cancer. ‘So inhibition of inflammation during cancer development may be beneficial.'”