Diarrhea Bug May Offer Cancer Cure

Makarand writes "Researchers now think that the diarrhea bug may be of help in building resistance to colon cancer. The toxins produced by E. coli, the diarrhea bug, irritate the lining of the bowels and also interact with the cells in a way that prevents them from becoming cancerous. This may very well explain why colorectal cancer is common in the developed countries but rare in the developing countries. Researchers who added E. coli toxins to a dish containing rapidly dividing cancer cells could almost brought the cancerous growth to a halt."

Comments

Re:diarrhea?

[Cy Guy]

Yes, E.coli has gotten a bad rap because a couple of its strains (like 0157 and 0111) have caused terrible outbreaks of conditions MUCH worse than diarhea, including death of children and total organ failure. But most variants of E.coli (named for MC Escher because of its capability of rolling into a ball like a creature in one of Escher's drawings) are perfectly harmless or even beneficial* to our normal digestive process.

If anything the blame for the outbreaks lies with the meat processors who slaughter cattle in unsanitary ways that allows the contents of the gut to get mixed with the meat we eat. When this happens with steak, it really doesn't have much of an effect since the interior of the steak is never exposed to the E.coli and the exterior is cooked. But when a gut-splattered beef is left unwashed and then ground into hamburger - there is a chance that the interior of a hamburger will not be cooked to a temperature high enough to kill the E.coli (hambugers should never be served rare).

* there is current research being done to try and overwhelm 0157 in cattle by colonizing their tract with just beneficial strains. But this implies the meat processors aren't going to ficx the problem the right way by getting the sh!t out of our food in the first place.