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Diagnosing pancreatic cancer early could help fast-track a person’s access to adequate treatment and boost the likelihood of a positive outcome. However, because this type of cancer has few symptoms in the beginning, it can go undiagnosed for a long time.
In a recent study, a team of researchers from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China has investigated how the human tongue microbiota could act as a diagnostic tool for pancreatic cancer.The researchers’ findings shows the differences in the bacterial populations on the tongues of healthy people versus those of people with early-stage pancreatic cancer.
In this study, the researchers worked with 30 individuals who had already received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in its early stages, as well as 25 healthy individuals who acted as the control group. All of the participants were aged between 45 and 65, they did not have other health problems (including oral health problems), and none had taken either antibiotics or any other class of drug for 3 months prior to the beginning of the study.
“Although further confirmatory studies are needed, our results add to the growing evidence of an association between disruptions to the microbiome and pancreatic cancer,” notes the study’s lead author, Dr. Lanjuan Li.
“If an association between the discriminatory bacteria and pancreatic cancer is confirmed in larger studies, this could potentially lead to the development of new microbiome-based early diagnostic or preventive tools for the disease,” she adds.
Existing studies have already suggested that there is a connection between pancreatic health and bacterial abundance in the gut and that the communication between the two is established through the immune system.