Microbial characterization of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and gastric cardia adenocarcinoma from a high‐risk region of China

Abstract

Background Little is known about the microbiota and upper gastrointestinal tumors. Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) and gastric cardia adenocarcinoma (GCA) occur in adjacent organs, co‐occur geographically, and share many risk factors despite being of different tissue types. Methods This study characterized the microbial communities of paired tumor and nontumor samples from 67 patients with ESCC and 36 patients with GCA in Henan, China. DNA was extracted with the MoBio PowerSoil kit. The V4 region of the 16S ribosomal RNA gene was sequenced with MiniSeq and was processed with Quantitative Insights Into Microbial Ecology 1. The linear discriminant analysis effect size method was used to identify differentially abundant microbes, the Wilcoxon rank‐sum test was used to test α diversity differences, and permutational multivariate analysis of variance was used to test for differences in β diversity. Results The microbial environments of ESCC and GCA tissues were all composed primarily of Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, and Proteobacteria. ESCC tumor tissues contained more Fusobacterium (3.2% vs 1.3%) and less Streptococcus (12.0% vs 30.2%) than nontumor tissues. GCA nontumor tissues had a greater abundance of Helicobacter (60.5% vs 11.8%), which may have been linked to the lower α diversity (58.0 vs 102.5; P = .0012) in comparison with tumor tissues. A comparison of ESCC and GCA nontumor tissues showed that the microbial composition (P = .0040) and the α diversity (87.0 vs 58.0; P = .00052) were significantly different. No significant differences were detected for α diversity within ESCC and GCA tumor tissues. Conclusions This study showed differences in the microbial compositions of paired ESCC and GCA tumor and nontumor tissues and differences by organ site. Large‐scale, prospective cohort studies are needed to confirm these findings.

Alterations in Gastric Microbial Communities are Associated with Risk of Gastric Cancer in a Korean Population: A Case-Control Study

“…In our study, Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, and Fusobacterium were the most dominant phyla in case and control groups. Comparison with the previous research ndings, Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Actinobacteria, and Fusobacteria was identi ed as the most dominant phyla in the gastric environment which shows consistent results with the current study [19,22,[37][38][39]. A study conducted using Chinese and Mexican populations revealed that HP was the predominant member of the microbiota in the gastric environment [40].…”

“…In addition, some of recent epidemiological studies have suggested the involvement of gastric microbiome in GC occurrence by the induction of chronic in ammation or down regulation of host immunity [17][18][19][20][21][22][23].…”

Exploring Esophageal Microbiomes in Esophageal Diseases: A Systematic Review

“…41 An association of Fusobacterium nucleatum, one of the periodontal bacteria, with the risk of colorectal cancer has been proven. 42 Another study by Shao et al 31 evaluated the difference in the esophageal microbiome between patients with ESCC and those with gastric cardia adenocarcinoma (GCA). Patients with ESCC showed a high proportion of Fusobacteria phylum (ESCC: 3.9% and GCA: 1.9%).…”

Involvement of Fusobacterium Species in Oral Cancer Progression: A Literature Review Including Other Types of Cancer

“…Yamamura et al reported that DNA levels of F. nucleatum in esophageal cancer tissues were higher than those in pared adjacent non-tumor tissues [ 47 ]. Moreover, esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) tissues contained more Fusobacterium (3.2% vs. 1.3%) and less Streptococcus (12.0% vs. 30.2%), compared to the non-tumor tissues [ 48 ]. Importantly, higher DNA levels of F. nucleatum in ESCC patients were significantly associated with cancer-specific survival [ 47 ], predicted poor recurrence-free survival, and poor response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy [ 49 ].…”