Ángel Lanas

Infection with the bacterium Helicobacter pylori is a known risk factor for stomach cancer. Its link to colorectal cancer, however, remains an unconfirmed hypothesis. An international team has reviewed 43 studies on this subject and found that 22 per cent of colorectal cancer cases could potentially be linked to this infection, although when they selected the 14 most reliable studies, the figure fell to 12 per cent. According to the authors, exposure to Helicobacter pylori could be contributing significantly to the number of cases of colon cancer worldwide, but they point out that their study is only exploratory and that more robust research, such as clinical trials, is needed to establish a causal link. The results have been published in eGastroenterology.

An international team has found that aspirin is capable of reducing the appearance of metastasis in mice, by enabling the activation of T lymphocytes capable of recognising tumour cells. The research showed that several different mouse cancer models — including breast cancer, colon cancer and melanoma — treated with aspirin showed a lower rate of metastasis in other organs, such as the lungs and liver, compared to untreated mice. According to the authors, who publish the results in the journal Nature, ‘the finding paves the way for the use of more effective anti-metastatic immunotherapies’.