A new study confirms that eating garlic reduces the risk of developing colorectal cancer.
- An Italian study confirms the protective effect of garlic against colorectal cancer.
- The bacterial material from the gut microbiota present in the bloodstream of people who ate a lot of garlic was different.
- For the researchers, their work shows the protective effect of garlic against colorectal cancer could be explained by the “diet-microbiota axis”.
Eating garlic doesn’t just keep kissers away… it also keeps colon cancer at bay.
An Italian study confirms that the condiment reduces the risk of developing a colorectal malignancy.
Garlic has a protective effect against colorectal cancer
To determine the link between garlic and colorectal cancers, the researchers used data from work carried out in two university hospitals in the Milan region. The sample consisted of 100 patients with colorectal cancer, 100 patients with adenomatous polyps and 100 healthy people.
The participants had to answer a questionnaire which aimed to assess the frequency of their consumption of 75 foods used in Italian cuisine and five alcoholic beverages. Blood tests were also performed to analyze the presence of traces of pathogens from the intestinal microbiota.
According to the results published in the article in the journal European Journal of Nutrition at the end of April, individuals who eat a medium to high amount of garlic have a much lower risk of developing colorectal cancer than those who eat little.
Colorectal cancer and garlic: the microbiota would play a key role
Thanks to the analyses, the researchers also noticed that the great garlic lovers showed DNA traces of bacteria from the microbiota in their blood that were different from the other participants.
“Medium/high garlic consumption was associated with an increase in the order Corynebacteriales, family Nocardiaceae and genus Rhodococcus, and a decrease in Family XI and genus Finegoldia”write the authors in their article.
Thus, they conclude that in addition to providing new data on the protective effect of garlic against colorectal cancer, their study “supports evidence for translocation (movement of a substance from one site to another, editor’s note) of bacterial material in the bloodstream and supports the hypothesis of a food-microbiota axis as the mechanism behind the role garlic in the prevention of colorectal cancer”.
