Jiyoung Ahn

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New York University

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PLCO (Learn more about this study)

2011-0271

Apr 27, 2012

Oral microbiome and risk of pancreatic cancer

Background: Inflammatory processes are believed to be important in pancreas carcinogenesis, yet the specific causes are poorly understood and there are no absolute means to prevent this disease. The human mouth hosts a complex oral bacterial community, or microbiome. In our preliminary data, using high throughput sequencing of the 16S rRNA bacterial gene, we demonstrated, for the first time, the possibility that human oral microbiome significantly differs between pancreatic cancer cases and controls, and that several bacteria consistent with oral origin are found in the pancreatic duct fluid. Further, we reported that people with poor oral health status (caused by oral bacteria) and people with elevated oral bacteria serum antibodies are at increased risk for pancreatic cancer. Hypothesis/Goal: We propose an innovative hypothesis that the oral microbiome potentiates pancreas carcinogenesis, by inflammation in the pancreas microenvironment. We will examine if oral microbiome, assayed by 16S rRNA gene sequencing, differs between healthy individuals who went on to develop pancreatic cancer (228 cases), compared to healthy individuals who did not go on to develop pancreatic cancer (456 nested controls), in a nested case-control study in the PLCO cohort. Impact: This is the first study of the oral microbiome and pancreatic cancer risk in a large well-designed epidemiologic cohort. The impact of this study will be great, potentially leading to the development of microbially-based prophylactic interventions to prevent this disease, identifying people at high risk of pancreatic cancer, and improving our current limited knowledge on the causes of this disease.