Tex, need your analysis
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Tex, need your analysis
MC diagnosed 2007
Biofilms have been a popular topic for the past several years. But researchers haven't really discovered anything significant about them except that they are persistent, and bacteria shielded by biofilms are almost impossible to exterminate due to the fact that biofilms are difficult (almost impossible) to penetrate with antibiotics. The title of the article is Could Bacteria Play a Role in Colon Cancer?. And yet I don't see any evidence in the article to even shed any light on an answer to that question, let alone support what the title suggests. All of the observations appear to be totally irrelevant. So my question is, "Why did they choose to use an irrelevant title for their article? Presumably the answer to my question is that they were just using sensationalism in an attempt to create interest for their article. What could be be more sensational than cancer and biofilms (2 hot topics in the same title). 
Their primary claims/observations are:
12 % of left side tumors are associated with biofilms
89 % of right side tumors are associated with biofilms
So what? There's no evidence in the article that biofilms promote cancer. The mere presence of biofilms appears to be irrelevant (based on information in the article). I would conclude from the observations that biofilms are simply more common in the right side colon. Why? Probably because bacteria tend to thrive in the upstream end of the colon, simply because that's where most of nutrients that were not absorbed in the small intestine are available. By the time the fecal stream moves downstream (past the right side colon), opportunistic bacteria have stripped out most of the available nutrients, so it's not surprising that bacteria (and therefore biofilms) would tend to be concentrated on the proximal (upstream) end rather than the distal (downstream) end of the colon.
Tex
Their primary claims/observations are:12 % of left side tumors are associated with biofilms
89 % of right side tumors are associated with biofilms
So what? There's no evidence in the article that biofilms promote cancer. The mere presence of biofilms appears to be irrelevant (based on information in the article). I would conclude from the observations that biofilms are simply more common in the right side colon. Why? Probably because bacteria tend to thrive in the upstream end of the colon, simply because that's where most of nutrients that were not absorbed in the small intestine are available. By the time the fecal stream moves downstream (past the right side colon), opportunistic bacteria have stripped out most of the available nutrients, so it's not surprising that bacteria (and therefore biofilms) would tend to be concentrated on the proximal (upstream) end rather than the distal (downstream) end of the colon.
Tex
It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.