Prevalence of Fusobacterium nucleatum infection in colorectal cancer patients

Introduction: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most common cancer in the world and the fourth most frequent cause of death in the world. Recent findings had showed that there is a meaningful association between the report of CRC and presence of F. nucleatum. The aim of our study was to examine the prevalence of F. nucleatum isolated from biopsy samples taken from CRC patients. Materials and methods: A total of 25 biopsy samples from CRC patients were tested to investigate the prevalence of this bacterium among the obtained samples. Following the DNA extraction, a specific primers set were used to amplify the F. nucleatum housekeeping gene. Statistical analysis was performed with the statistical package PASW Statistics version 18.01. The level of significance was set at 0.05%. Results: Overall, sixteen out of 25 CRC samples were F. nucleatum positive (P value=0.046). No significant association was found between resistance and sex, age, were F. nucleatum positivity (P value> 0.05). Conclusion: In total, F. nucleatum is showing the enough potential to at least partially participate in inducing the colorectal cancer. However, in depth analysis of this bacterium using multicenter studies with larger sample size is required before any clearer conclusion.

Keywords:

F. nucleatum , CRC patients , PCR method , colonoscopy surgery