09/11/2025
More and more we are hearing about the importance of the gut microbiome. In functional medicine we have been talking about this for a very long time. The Journal of the American Medical Association recently published an article discussing the importance of the gut microbiome and cancer. Below are some of the highlights from that article.
What we eat and ingest has a profound impact on our health and so much of that impact is because of the impact on the gut microbiome.
In our gut microbiomes we have bacteria, viruses, fungi, and archaea. An intact gut barrier and a high diversity of healthy microbes is important for optimal health.
Dysbiosis which is a suboptimal balance of microbes, and a disrupted gut barrier are known to cause systemic inflammation and disruptions to our immune system. There are well-established links with the gut microbiome and depression, anxiety and many different autoimmune diseases.
A study of 111 patients with pancreatic cancer, from two separate institutions, shows that people who survived longer than five years after surgery had a higher diversity of microbes within the tumor microenvironment and a greater abundance of cytotoxic killer T lymphocytes.
Another study took f***s from patients who had survived greater than 5 years with pancreatic cancer and those who did not and did a f***l microbiome transplant with mice who had pancreatic cancer. The mice who got the transplant from the survivors had reduced tumor growth and improved anti-tumor immunity compared to mice who received transplants for patients with pancreatic cancer who had short term survival.
Several studies of patients with cancer who received broad-spectrum antibiotics prior to treatment had lower tumor response rates to therapy and reduced overall survival and higher rates of adverse effects.
One retrospective analysis of 128 patients with metastatic melanoma showed an association with fiber intake and longer remission.
JAMA. 2025 Jun 24;333(24):2188-2196.
doi: 10.1001/jama.2025.2191.
