Metabolic and Nutritional Parameters in Patients after Colonic Polypectomy

Abstract

Breath methane and hydrogen, plasma acetate, serum selenium, vitamin A and β-carotene were measured in 47 patients from whom colonic polyps had been removed by endoscopic polypectomy between 3 months and 2 years previously. Patients were compared with 39 control subjects in whom no abnormality was detected during colonoscopy. The proportion of methane exhalers was significantly (p < 0.0005) higher in patients after polypectomy (66.0%) than in controls (28.2%). Mean plasma acetate was lower (p < 0.025) in post-polypectomy patients (70.5 μM) than in control subjects (97.1 μM) while breath hydrogen was similar in both groups. The serum concentrations of the antioxidants selenium and β-carotene showed no differences between the groups whereas vitamin A was higher (p < 0.01) in serum samples of patients after polypectomy than of controls. These findings indicate that the colonic environment in post-polypectomy patients exhibits certain characteristics which may be related to the formation of benign tumors and possibly colon cancer.

Breath hydrogen and methane in populations at different risk for colon cancer

“…In 6 of these past studies, no effect of sex on breath methane excretion was seen (McKay et al, 1985;Scheppach et al, 1988;Bond et al, 1971;Bjorneklett and Jensen, 1982;Pique et al, 1984;Kashtan et al, 1989), while in 4 others, proportionately more women were producers than men (Segal et al, 1988;Pitt et al, 1980;Hoff et al, 1986;Haines et al, 1984). No study has found men to be significantly more likely to be producers.…”

“…In our study, breath hydrogen and methane levels were similar between sexes and only weakly associated with age. To our knowledge, only one other published study attempted to measure breath hydrogen in individuals on regular diets (Scheppach et al, 1988). However, this small study used a single fasting measurement.…”

“…Hydrogen levels in the breath have been shown to correlate very well ( I = 0.9) with concentrations produced in the large intestine (Levitt, 1969), whereas methane appears to be excreted in the breath only when production reaches a threshold in the gut (McKay et al, 1985). Although these gases have been commonly used to investigate carbohydrate malabsorption in clinical practice (Tadesse et al, 1980), they have rarely been assessed in individuals at high risk for colon cancer in epidemiologic studies (Scheppach et al, 1988;Segal et al, 1988).We report here on an ecological study comparing breath excretion of 2 markers of colonic fermentation (hydrogen and methane) among ten ethnic and sex groups with marked differences in the risk of colon cancer in Hawaii.…”

Interpretable machine learning analysis of functional metagenomic profiles improves colorectal cancer prediction and reveals basic molecular mechanisms.

“…Supplementary Figure 5 contains the most relevant features, which include proteins with functionalities related to CCR, such as amino acid metabolism [56], redox metabolism [57] or more generic biomarkers of bacterial proliferation [58]. Also, some specific features of adenoma, like the coenzyme F420 hydrogenase subunit beta, related to methane metabolism, enhanced in adenoma patients [41], or the chemotaxis protein methyltransferase CheR and the pilus assembly protein FimV, both related to chemotaxis and cell motility which have been described as a distinctive feature of adenomas [42], are also listed among the most relevant features. The most relevant feature, the large subunit ribosomal protein L19e, is an archaeal protein used as bad prognostic CRC biomarker [40].…”

“…Most of them are specific features of CRC that start to appear probably in the first adenoma stages previous to the cancer. Some of them are known CRC prognostic biomarkers, such as the archaeal large subunit ribosomal protein L19e [40], while other are characteristic of the adenoma stage, like the coenzyme F420 hydrogenase subunit beta, related to methane metabolism, enhanced in adenoma patients [41] or the chemotaxis protein methyltransferase CheR, which has been described as a distinctive feature of patients with adenomas [42].…”