Yogurt contains several live strains of bacteria that are believed to help protect against many types of diseases, some studies suggest that it could help to reduce the risk of colorectal cancer. Taking a deeper dive into these protective effects, a study published in Gut Microbes from Mass General Brigham found that long-term consumption of yogurt may help to protect against colorectal cancer by promoting changes in the gut microbiome.
Investigating The Potential Benefit Of Yogurt
“Our study provides unique evidence about the potential benefit of yogurt,” said corresponding author Shuji Ogino, MD, PhD, the chief of the Program in Molecular Pathological Epidemiology in the Department of Pathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system. Ogino is also an American Cancer Society Professor, a Professor at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and an Affiliate Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
“My lab’s approach is to try to link long-term diets and other exposures to a possible key difference in tissue, such as the presence or absence of a particular species of bacteria. This kind of detective work can increase the strength of evidence connecting diet to health outcomes,” explained Ogino.
This study utilized data from the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS) and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS) which followed over 100,00 female registered nurses and more than 51,000 male health professionals who have been followed since 1976 in the NHS and since 1986 in the HFPS. The participants answered questionnaires about their lifestyle factors, and disease outcomes which included questions about their intake of both flavored and plain yogurt and other dairy products. The participants with confirmed cases of colorectal cancer also provided tissue samples to assess for the amounts of Bifidobacterium DNA in tumor tissues.
What They Found
The analysis revealed 3,079 documented cases of colorectal cancer with 1,121 of those cases containing Bifidobacterium content; among those cases 31% were Bifidobacterium-positive and 69% were Bifidobacterium-negative. While the researchers did not find an association between the long-term intake and overall incidence of colorectal cancer, they did observe an association between Bifidobacterium-positive tumors with a 20% lower incident rate among those consuming 2 or more servings of yogurt per week. The protective effect was hypothesized to be due to the long-term yogurt intake changing the gut microbiome, but more research is required to make a definitive conclusion.
“It has long been believed that yogurt and other fermented milk products are beneficial for gastrointestinal health,” said co-senior author Tomotaka Ugai, MD, PhD, of the Department of Pathology at the Brigham and the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Our new findings suggest that this protective effect may be specific for Bifidobacterium-positive tumors.”
“This paper adds to the growing evidence that illustrates the connection between diet, the gut microbiome, and risk of colorectal cancer,” said co-author Andrew T Chan, MD, chief of the Clinical and Translational Epidemiology Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system and co-lead for Cancer Grand Challenges team PROSPECT addressing causes of cancer in young adults. “It provides an additional avenue for us to investigate the specific role of these factors in the risk of colorectal cancer among young people.”
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