Bacterial Cancer

• Published in: Iranian biomedical journal Vol. 21; no. 1; p. 1
• Main Author: Mohammadi, Marjan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Tehran Pasteur Institute of Iran 01.01.2017
• Subjects: Antigens; Bacterial infections; Gastric cancer; Genes; Infections; Inflammation; Laboratory animals; Mutation; Pathogens
• ISSN: 1028-852X

Persistent bacterial infections cause persistent irritation of the host's defense systems, which when ineffective in eradication of the infection, result in a multitude of self-destructive damages. This in some cases occurs to such severity that the resulting cellular hyper-proliferation provides grounds for increased chances of writing errors (gene mutations) and decreased chances of corrections (gene repair). This is the basis of inflammation-induced cancer where presence of pathogens or other stimuli induce a chronic state of inflammation, yielding an array of defective cycles. Rudolph Virchow (1821-1902), a famous German pathologist, simplified "cancer" as a wound that never heals. In the case of Hp infection, the bacteria colonize a very convenient location in the stomach (underneath the mucus layer), where they firmly adhere to the apical lining of the gastric epithelium, while protected from the destructive gastric acid (by means of its alkaline producing urease) and the flood of peristalsis (by means of its multiple array of adhesins; i.e the blood group binding antigen: BabA).