More shoo shoo! Or...intestinal flora and melanoma

I've posted on all things dietetic and the flora in our gut in particular for YEARS!!!  Here was my latest round-up just this January:  Microbes again...and how they may be associated with improved response to anti-PD-1 for melanoma patients...and you might even laugh!!!

I do recommend healthy eating and exercise.  I do take 2000 iu of vitamin D daily.  I do eat lots of foods with active cultures in them - yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, etc. I eat them because I like them and we have learned that cooties in our gut are important whether they really do anything when we take anti-PD-1 and deal with melanoma or not.  I wish that making immunotherapy effective for everyone who takes it were as simple as a diet change.  However, as I've noted in prior posts...this pendulum continues to swing back and forth and the data is far from conclusive.

Now, there's this ~

The gut microbiota and immune checkpoint inhibitors. Humphries and Daud.Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2018 Mar 1.

Although immunotherapy has been remarkably effective across multiple cancer types, there continues to be a significant number of non-responding patients. A possible factor proposed to influence the efficacy of immunotherapies is the gut microbiome. We discuss the results and implications of recent research on the relationship between the gut microbiome, our immune systems, and immune checkpoint inhibitor therapies including anti-CTLA-4 Ab and anti-PD-1 Ab. While the investigations all exhibit interesting results and conclusions, we find little congruence in the specific bacteria that were found favorable for antitumor responses. It is unclear whether the inconsistencies are due to differential approaches in study design (pre-clinical or clinical subjects, anti-CTLA-4 Ab or anti-PD-1 Ab), experimental methods and measurements (metagenomics sequencing and clustering variations) or subject population dynamics (differential cancer types and baseline characteristics). Moreover, we note studies regarding particular bacterial commensals and autoimmune diseases, which challenge findings from these investigations. We conclude that with the current research, clinical investigators can appreciate the critical role of gut microbiota in mediating immunostimulant response. However, prospective research exploring the biochemical mechanisms which commensal bacteria communicate with each other and the immune system is imperative to understand how they can be adjusted properly for higher immunotherapy response.

For what it's worth.  Hang tough.  Be well. - c