What might your microbiome have to do with your cancer risk? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Your microbiome is the collection of microorganisms that live on you and in you, with a new study pointing to certain bacteria as increasing one’s risk of pancreas cancer. Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center director William Nelson says many new studies are pointing in this direction.

Nelson: This is one of what I would argue are sort of an accumulating collection of studies trying to correlate or associate certain bugs in the mouth, which means it would be in the saliva, obviously you would swallow them, in the nasopharynx, on the skin, in the stool, in various parts of the body that are resident organisms. They're almost like another organ. They help metabolize vitamins to productive states, they do all kinds of things. Are some people carrying collections of these that would create an environmental milieu that might lead to colorectal cancer, to lung cancer, to pancreatic cancer?   :33

Nelson predicts that assessments of one’s microbiome may become common practice. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.