Why do certain microorganisms colonize your body? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Your microbiome, the host of organisms that live on and in you, are unique to you, with a new study showing that some types of bacteria and fungi may increase your risk for pancreas cancer. Kimmel Cancer Center director William Nelson at Johns Hopkins notes that some bacteria decreased risk, while others increased it.

Nelson: They also looked at fungi. From this they tried to give a risk score. It's difficult to know where this is going to play out in terms of practical care applications but if you look broadly at all the studies that are ongoing there's definitely a sense that this microbiome we call it is affected by things that we do in our lifestyle. By smoking, what we eat, the habits that we have but it is shaping the way we develop or don't develop many diseases and pancreatic cancer is probably one of them.    :28

Nelson says such results clearly beg the question of whether the microbiome can be modified to a more beneficial state, which some are attempting with things like probiotics or live cultures, but at the moment the data aren’t convincing. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.