A new study conducted by researchers from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Harvard Medical School, and Massachusetts General Hospital linked precancerous colon polyps to specific gut bacteria.
Published in Cell Host & Microbe, the study compared the stool samples and colonoscopies of 971 participants. Stool samples were used to get a snapshot of the gut microbiome—the community of bacteria, viruses, and fungi that live primarily in the colon.
The study revealed a distinct microbial fingerprint among those who were found to have tubular adenomas and sessile serrated adenomas—two types of colon lesions that are considered premalignant. One of the largest studies of its kind, it detected 19 significantly different bacterial species in those patients with tubular adenomas and eight significantly different species in those with sessile serrated adenomas….