The biggest mystery surrounding Colon cancer finally gets an answer as over 40 percent find early detection success, all because of a virus that healthy people will just not have.
The researcher that brought this finding to light in a renowned journal is Dr Flemming Damgaard.
The medical doctor and PhD at the Department of Clinical Microbiology at Odense University Hospital and the University of Southern Denmark explained how his team answered this long living paradox.
He started by saying, “it has been a paradox that we repeatedly find the same bacterium in connection with colorectal cancer, while at the same time it is a completely normal part of the gut in healthy people.”
But now the team has “discovered a virus that has not previously been described and which appears to be closely linked to the bacteria we find in patients with colorectal cancer.”
What the expert made clear though in his conversation is that “it is not just the bacterium itself that seems interesting. It is the bacterium in interaction with the virus it carries. We do not yet know whether the virus is a contributing cause, or whether it is simply a sign that something else in the gut has changed,
As for what caused them to even comb through this, Flemming says, “It was in our Danish material that we first detected a signal. That gave us a concrete hypothesis, which we were then able to investigate in larger datasets.”
Almost 877 individuals across Europe, the United States, and Asia were chosen in order to ensure the findings would be similar across continents.
By the end of it, they found consistency, and even came to the realization that people with colorectal cancer were almost twice as likely to carry these viruses inside their gut.
For those unversed, nearly 80% of cases of colorectal cancer are found to be a result of environmental factors, including the microorganisms in the gut, Science Daily claims.
As Dr Flemming explains, “the number and diversity of bacteria in the gut is enormous. Previously, it has been like looking for a needle in a haystack. Instead, we have investigated whether something inside the bacteria — namely viruses — might help explain the difference.”
However he did make one thing clear and that’s that “we do not yet know why the virus is present, but we are investigating whether it contributes to the development of colorectal cancer.”
As of right now though, in the short term “we can investigate whether the virus can be used to identify individuals at increased risk,” he added before concluding.
What is pertinent to mention is that almost 40 per cent of cancer cases, could be identified with their current findings.
