African-Americans and Africans who swapped their typical diets for just two weeks similarly exchanged their respective risks of colon cancer as reflected by alterations of their gut bacteria, according to an international study led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine published online today in Nature Communications.
Principal investigator Stephen O’Keefe, M.D., professor of medicine, Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, Pitt School of Medicine, observed while practicing in South Africa that his rural patients rarely had colon cancer or intestinal polyps, which can be a cancer precursor. In the Western world, colon cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death and African-Americans carry the greatest disease burden in the United States.
“The African-American diet, which contains more animal protein and fat, and less soluble fiber than the African diet, is thought to increase colon cancer risk,” Dr. O’Keefe explained. “Other studies with Japanese migrants…
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