Clostridioides difficile, or C. difficile, a bacterial species that’s well known for causing serious diarrheal infections, may also drive colorectal cancer, research in mice has found.
The findings appear in the journal Cancer Discovery, and may expose another troublesome role for this microbe, which causes approximately 500,000 infections a year in the United States—many of which prove incredibly difficult to clear.
“The uptick of individuals under age 50 being diagnosed with colorectal cancer in recent years has been shocking. We found that this bacterium appears to be a very unexpected contributor to colon malignancy, the process by which normal cells become cancer,” said Cynthia Sears, professor of cancer immunotherapy and professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine….