Relationship Between Intestinal Microbiota and Clinical Characteristics of Patients with Early Stage Breast Cancer

Abstract

Gut microbiota is involved in numerous physiopathological situations including cancers. Our objective is to evaluate the relationship between the composition of microbiota and the clinicobiological characteristics of patients with breast cancer.
 Clinical data and faeces from 32 patients with early stage breast cancer were collected, before any therapeutic intervention. Bacterial DNA extracted from faeces was amplified by PCR targeting 16S rRNA gene sequences specific to different bacterial phyla. Expression was compared in groups of patients defined by clinical stages of the disease as well as BMI.
 Most patients suffered of invasive ductal (81%), clinical stage 0 (46.9%), with histological grading II (62.5 %), ER/PgR (80%) and HER2 (15%). About 28.1 % and 12.5 % of patients were overweight and/or obese, respectively. 
 Significant differences were observed for absolute numbers of total bacteria and for some studied bacterial groups (F prausnitzii, Firmicutes, Blautia and Egerthella) according to BMI. Compared with patients with grade I (n=5), patients with grade III (n=7) had increased absolute numbers of Blautia sp. (9.8±0.2 vs 9.5 ± 0.2 log copies.g‐1, p=0.048), for example. Furthermore, absolute numbers of Bifidobacterium and Blautia, and proportions of F Prausnitzii and Blautia, were significanly different according to clinical stages.
 Our study highlighted that, in these patients, intestinal microbiota composition differs according to clinical characteristics and BMI. These results should be confirmed to clarify the link between breast cancer and intestinal microbiota.

Microbiota and Oral Cancer as A Complex and Dynamic Microenvironment: A Narrative Review from Etiology to Prognosis

“…Gut microbiome of breast cancer patients differs from that of healthy subjects and some species contain members that can cause double-stranded DNA breaks in cells that make up breast cancers [ 98 , 99 ]. Furthermore, a correlation has been shown [ 100 ] between composition and cancer grade, suggesting a relationship between the microbiome and breast cancer development and progression. Finally, balancing a dysbiotic microbiome with the use of antibiotics therapy, which usually increases the risk of breast cancer can be useful either before or after a cancer diagnosis [ 96 ].…”

The Association Between Breast Density and Gut Microbiota Composition at 2 Years Post-Menarche: A Cross-Sectional Study of Adolescents in Santiago, Chile

“…Other studies also support associations of specific microbial taxa (e.g., Bacteroidetes, Blautia spp.) with breast cancer staging and clinical characteristics, including body size (Bard et al, 2015;Luu et al, 2017). Much less information is available from epidemiologic studies on the possible association between the gut microbiome and breast density.…”

Modulation of Gut Microbiota to Enhance Effect of Checkpoint Inhibitor Immunotherapy

“…They collected fecal samples from different stages of breast cancer patients, and performed 16S rRNA sequencing, they found that stage I patients had a lower absolute number of Blautia sp. than stage III, several other bacterial species (Bifidobacterium, Blautia, F. Prausnitzii, and Blautia) were different according to different clinical stages of breast cancer (53). Another research also found that gut microbiota was associated with different stages of breast cancer, compared to patients in stage 0/I, the number of Bacteroidetes, Clostridium coccoides cluster, Clostridium leptum cluster, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, and Blautia sp.…”