NewsMakers
Diet, gut microbes affect cancer treatment outcomes, research suggests
What we eat can affect the outcome of chemotherapy – and likely many other medical treatments – because of ripple effects that begin in our gut, new research suggests.

What we eat can affect the outcome of chemotherapy – and likely many other medical treatments – because of ripple effects that begin in our gut, new research suggests.
University of Virginia scientists found that diet can cause microbes in the gut to trigger changes in the host’s response to a chemotherapy drug. Common components of our daily diets (for example, amino acids) could either increase or decrease both the effectiveness and toxicity of the drugs used for cancer treatment, the researchers found.
The discovery opens an important new avenue of medical research and could have major implications for predicting the right dose and better controlling the side effects of chemotherapy, the researchers report. The finding also may help explain differences seen in patient responses to chemotherapy that have baffled doctors until now.
“The first time we observed that changing the microbe or adding a single amino acid to the diet could transform an innocuous dose of the drug into a highly toxic one, we couldn’t believe our eyes,” said Eyleen O’Rourke, PhD, of UVA’s College of Arts & Sciences, the School of Medicine’s Department of Cell Biology and the Robert M. Berne Cardiovascular Research Center. “Understanding, with molecular resolution, what was going on took sieving through hundreds of microbe and host genes. The answer was an astonishingly complex network of interactions between diet, microbe, drug and host.”
How Diet Affects Chemotherapy
Doctors have long appreciated the importance of nutrition on human health. But the new discovery highlights how what we eat affects not just us but the microorganisms within us.
The changes that diet triggers on the microorganisms can increase the toxicity of a chemotherapeutic drug up to 100-fold, the researchers found using the new lab model they created with roundworms. “The same dose of the drug that does nothing on the control diet kills the [roundworm] if a milligram of the amino acid serine is added to the diet,” said Wenfan Ke, a graduate student and lead author of a new scientific paper outlining the findings.
Further, different diet and microbe combinations change how the host responds to chemotherapy. “The data show that single dietary changes can shift the microbe’s metabolism and, consequently, change or even revert the host response to a drug,” the researchers report in their paper published in Nature Communications.
In short, this means that we eat not just for ourselves but for the more than 1,000 species of microorganisms that live inside each of us, and that how we feed these bugs has a profound effect on our health and the response to medical treatment. One day, doctors may give patients not just prescriptions but detailed dietary guidelines and personally formulated microbe cocktails to help them reach the best outcome.
Researchers have observed microbes and diet affecting treatment outcomes before. However, the new research stands out because it is the first time that the underlying molecular processes have been fully dissected.
A New Model
The researchers’ new model is an extremely simplified version of the complex microbiome – collection of microorganisms – found in people. Roundworms serve as the host, and non-pathogenic E. coli bacteria represent the microbes in the gut. In people, the relationships among diet, microorganisms and host is vastly more complex, and understanding this will be a major task for scientists going forward.
The research team noted that drug developers will need to take steps to account for the effect of diet and microbes during their lab work. For example, they will need to factor in whether diet could cause the microorganisms to produce substances, called metabolites, that could interfere or facilitate the effect of the drugs.
The researchers suggest that the complexity of the interactions among drug, host and microbiome is likely “astronomical.” Much more study is needed, but the resulting understanding, they say, will help doctors “realize the full therapeutic potential of the microbiota.”
“The potential of developing drugs that can improve treatment outcomes by modulating the microbes that live in our gut is enormous,” O’Rourke said. “However, the complexity of the interactions between diet, microbes, therapeutics and the host that we uncovered in this study is humbling. We will need lots of basic research, including sophisticated computer modeling, to reveal how to fully exploit the therapeutic potential of our microbes.”
The research team consisted of Ke, James A. Saba, Cong-Hui Yao, Michael A. Hilzendeger, Anna Drangowska-Way, Chintan Joshi, Vinod K. Mony, Shawna B. Benjamin, Sisi Zhang, Jason Locasale, Gary J. Patti, Nathan Lewis and O’Rourke.
NewsMakers
Long-term yogurt consumption tied to decreased incidence of certain types of colorectal cancer
Yogurt consumption over time may protect against colorectal cancer through changes in the gut microbiome.

Yogurt, which contains live strains of bacteria, is thought to protect against many types of diseases, with some reports indicating it could reduce risk of colorectal cancer. A new study led by investigators from Mass General Brigham finds that yogurt consumption over time may protect against colorectal cancer through changes in the gut microbiome.
Using data from studies that have followed participants for decades, researchers found that long-term consumption of two or more servings per week of yogurt was tied to lower rates of proximal colorectal cancer positive for Bifidobacterium, a bacterial species found in yogurt. The study showed that the bacterial species was quite common: about 30 percent of patients with colorectal cancer had detectable Bifidobacterium in their tumor tissue. Their results are published in Gut Microbes.
“Our study provides unique evidence about the potential benefit of yogurt,” said corresponding author Shuji Ogino, MD, PhD, the chief of the Program in Molecular Pathological Epidemiology in the Department of Pathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system. Ogino is also an American Cancer Society Professor, a Professor at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and an Affiliate Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. “My lab’s approach is to try to link long-term diets and other exposures to a possible key difference in tissue, such as the presence or absence of a particular species of bacteria. This kind of detective work can increase the strength of evidence connecting diet to health outcomes.”
Ogino and colleagues – team OPTISTIMISTICC – are funded by Cancer Research UK through Cancer Grand Challenges, a research initiative co-founded by Cancer Research UK and the National Cancer Institute in the United States. OPTIMISTICC aims to transform the understanding of how the microbiome contributes to disease development, progression and response to treatment. As part of this, Ogino’s team aims to define the risk factors and environmental exposures that individuals encounter through life which are behind the rise of early-onset colorectal cancer and ultimately develop strategies to reduce the burden of this type of cancer.
To conduct their study, the researchers used data from two U.S.-wide prospective cohort studies known as the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS) and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS). The studies have followed more than 100,000 female registered nurses and 51,000 male health professionals, respectively. Participants have been followed since 1976 for the NHS and 1986 for HFPS, answering repeated questionnaires about lifestyle factors and disease outcomes, including questions about average daily intake of plain and flavored yogurt, as well as other dairy products. The researchers also assessed tissue samples for participants with confirmed cases of colorectal cancer, measuring the amount of Bifidobacterium DNA in tumor tissue.
The researchers found 3,079 documented cases of colorectal cancer in the two study populations. Information on Bifidobacterium content was available in 1,121 colorectal cancer cases. Among those, 346 cases (31%) were Bifidobacterium-positive, and 775 cases (69%) were Bifidobacterium-negative. The researchers did not observe a significant association between long-term yogurt intake and overall colorectal cancer incidence, but they did see an association in Bifidobacterium-positive tumors, with a 20 percent lower rate of incidence for participants who consumed two or more servings of yogurt a week. This lower rate was driven by lower incidence of Bifidobacterium-positive proximal colon cancer—a type of colorectal cancer that occurs in the right side of the colon. Studies have found that patients with proximal colon cancer have worse survival outcomes than patients with distal cancers.
“It has long been believed that yogurt and other fermented milk products are beneficial for gastrointestinal health,” said co-senior author Tomotaka Ugai, MD, PhD, of the Department of Pathology at the Brigham and the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Our new findings suggest that this protective effect may be specific for Bifidobacterium-positive tumors.”
The researchers hypothesize that long-term yogurt intake may reduce risk of proximal colon cancer by changing the gut microbiome, including Bifidobacterium, but they note that further research that brings together both basic science and population health studies is needed to draw a definitive conclusion.
“This paper adds to the growing evidence that illustrates the connection between diet, the gut microbiome, and risk of colorectal cancer,” said co-author Andrew T Chan, MD, chief of the Clinical and Translational Epidemiology Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system and co-lead for Cancer Grand Challenges team PROSPECT addressing causes of cancer in young adults. “It provides an additional avenue for us to investigate the specific role of these factors in the risk of colorectal cancer among young people.”
In addition to Ogino, Ugai and Chan, Mass General Brigham authors include Satoko Ugai, Hidetaka Kawamura, Kota Arima, Kazuo Okadome, Qian Yao, Kosuke Matsuda, and Yuxue Zhong. Additional authors include Li Liu, Keisuke Kosumi, Tsuyoshi Hamada, Kosuke Mima, Hiroki Mizuno, Wendy S. Garrett, Mingyang Song, Marios Giannakis, Edward L. Giovannucci, and Xuehong Zhang.
NewsMakers
New study finds lower cardiovascular risk in Type 1 diabetes compared to Type 2 diabetes
A lower risk of cardiovascular events for patients with Type 1 diabetes (often called juvenile diabetes) compared to those with Type 2 diabetes. The research highlights the differences between the two types of diabetes and provides new insights that could influence future treatment approaches.

A study published in JSCAI has revealed a lower risk of cardiovascular events for patients with Type 1 diabetes (often called juvenile diabetes) compared to those with Type 2 diabetes. The research highlights the differences between the two types of diabetes and provides new insights that could influence future treatment approaches.
“The study’s findings suggest that the cardiovascular risk associated with Type 1 diabetes is lower than previously thought, which has important implications for managing these patients. Our findings indicate that Type 1 diabetes is associated with a significantly lower risk of cardiovascular events compared to Type 2 diabetes, even after adjusting for various confounders such as age, diabetes control, and kidney function,” said Andrew M. Goldsweig, MD, MSc, FSCAI, director of cardiovascular clinical research at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, MA. “The power of big data amplifies the results: With the enormous population included in this analysis, we were able to identify a large number of people with Type 1 diabetes and compare them to those with Type 2 diabetes, providing a comprehensive understanding of the differences in cardiovascular risk.”
For the study, Goldsweig collaborated with Baystate pediatric endocrinologist Bracha Goldsweig, MD, to examine the Veradigm Metabolic Registry, operated in collaboration with the American College of Cardiology, which includes longitudinal records of 1.5 million individuals from over 700 facilities. The analysis identified nearly 6,000 people with Type 1 diabetes and compared their cardiovascular event rates to those of people with Type 2 diabetes. When controlling for confounders, the results showed that people with Type 1 diabetes had lower rates of myocardial infarction (MI), percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), stroke, and limb ischemia compared to people with Type 2 diabetes. There was no significant difference in the rates of bypass surgery between the two groups.
Dr. Bracha Goldsweig emphasized the importance of distinguishing between patients with each type of diabetes to develop targeted treatment strategies:
“Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes are fundamentally different diseases. People with Type 1 diabetes do not produce insulin, while people with Type 2 diabetes have insulin insensitivity. Our study shows that it is not appropriate to manage all people with diabetes identically, and dedicated studies for Type 1 diabetes are necessary to understand the best treatment approaches,” Dr. Bracha Goldsweig said. “People with Type 1 diabetes now live normal lifespans, and it is crucial to study this population to ensure they receive the best possible care.”
This research marks the first time the Doctors Goldsweig, who are spouses, have published together, highlighting the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration. An Early Career Research Grant (ECRG) from the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI) supported the project.
“We were excited to work together in this area where our fields overlap,” Dr. Andrew Goldsweig said. “The support from SCAI’s ECRG grant was crucial in making this research possible.”
NewsMakers
Children of housing loss have more depression, anxiety: Pitt study
“We knew that eviction or housing loss can impact the adults in a household, but we didn’t know as much about what happen to kids in families facing eviction or housing loss” said Jamie Hanson, associate professor in psychology at the University of Pittsburgh and the paper’s primary author.

At a time when costs are high and social safety nets appear further endangered, the experience of eviction, foreclosure, and housing loss creates a measurable and detrimental impact on families. New research, appearing in JAMA Network Open, now shows the true impact on children and their mental health.
“We knew that eviction or housing loss can impact the adults in a household, but we didn’t know as much about what happen to kids in families facing eviction or housing loss” said Jamie Hanson, associate professor in psychology at the University of Pittsburgh and the paper’s primary author.
In this new study, Hanson used data from over 36,000 families and looked at how a parent’s anxiety or stress about eviction, foreclosur, or housing loss was related to mental health issues in their kids. Stress about eviction or housing loss was associated with depression and anxiety disorders. “When a caregiver was really worried, this was related to a major increase, 10% to 35%, in depression,” Hanson said.
Particularly important was the impact on young children, under the age of 9. “Normally, we don’t see high rates of depression in young kids, those younger than 8 or 9; but a parent’s anxiety or stress about housing loss was related to those issues being reported more,” Hanson added.
Of note, stress about housing loss wasn’t related to increases in all mental health issues. “There weren’t major connections with ADHD and behavioral problems. We controlled for lots of other factors and didn’t see strong links,” Hanson said.
In sum, the stress increased the odds that children “will internalize issues, such as depression and anxiety,” the author wrote in the paper titled, “Stress About Eviction or Loss of Housing and Child Mental Health.”
“Notably, eviction and foreclosures are not equally distributed across demographics — it disproportionately affects individuals from minoritized racial and ethnic groups, the economically marginalized, and families with children in their homes,” Hanson wrote in the paper.
He added: “Our findings underscore the urgent need for policies and programs to address housing instability and protect children’s mental well-being. It doesn’t need to be this way. We could do more housing assistance; we could allow court records about eviction to be sealed for a period of time…. We need to do more.”
-
Product Showcase4 weeks ago
Manulife Wealth and Asset Management appoints Fabio Fontainha as Head of Asia
-
Product Showcase4 weeks ago
PhilCare members can now access Healthway’s full-service offerings
-
Dining Out3 weeks ago
A taste of Thai in Pasay
-
Dining Out2 weeks ago
Still trying to find the promise of Las Tres Marias Deliciosa Lasaña
-
Wellness3 weeks ago
Exercise improves brain function, possibly reducing dementia risk
-
Wellness3 weeks ago
Mental well-being and physical activity can form a positive cycle
-
Dining Out3 days ago
Heading to Cavite to try Som Thai Silang Bypass
-
NewsMakers2 days ago
Brain rhythms can predict seizure risk of Alzheimer’s disease patients, study finds