Could Yogurt Lower Your Odds for Deadly Colon Cancers?

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Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, BPharm. Last updated on Feb 13, 2025.

By Ernie Mundell HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Feb. 13, 2025 -- You may be less likely to develop an especially lethal form of colon cancer if you're a longtime consumer of yogurt, new research finds.

Folks who ate two or more servings of yogurt per week for years had a 20% lower odds for an aggressive type of tumor typically found on the right side of the colon, researchers reported Feb. 12 in the journal Gut Microbes.

The tumors' tissues also tested positive for a bacterium commonly found in yogurt, called Bifidobacterium.

“It has long been believed that yogurt and other fermented milk products are beneficial for gastrointestinal health,” co-senior author Dr. Tomotaka Ugai, a pathologist at Mass General Brigham in Boston, noted. “Our new findings suggest that this protective effect may be specific for Bifidobacterium-positive tumors."

Emerging science focused on the human body's microbiome -- the trillions of helpful bacteria that line the digestive tract and other organs -- has suggested that the intake of live bacteria in yogurt could aid health.

As explained by lead study author Dr. Shuji Ogino, his team aims “to link long-term diets and other exposures to a possible key difference in tissue, such as the presence or absence of a particular species of bacteria. This kind of detective work can increase the strength of evidence connecting diet to health outcomes.”

In the new study, Ogino and colleagues looked at lifelong dietary data from two decades-long U.S. population studies: The Nurses’ Health Study (involving 100,000 women) and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (involving 51,000 men).

As part of detailed questionnaires, people enrolled in each study were asked about their daily intake of plain and flavored yogurt.

The studies also contained information on cases of colon cancer arising over decades among study participants.

Overall, 3,079 cases of colon cancer arose among the 151,000 participants. Data on whether or not tumors were positive for Bifidobacterium were available for 1,121 tumors.

Among those tumors, 346 cases (31%) were Bifidobacterium-positive, and 775 cases (69%) were Bifidobacterium-negative.

The Brigham team found no significant association between a person's risk for colon cancer generally and the amount of yogurt they consumed.

However, when looking at Bifidobacterium-positive tumors, they found that eating two or more servings of yogurt per week was linked to a 20% reduced risk for these cancers.

The trend was driven by colon tumors arising on the organ's right side -- a site that gives rise to more aggressive, deadly cancers, the researchers noted.

“Our study provides unique evidence about the potential benefit of yogurt" against certain cancers, said Ogino, who is chief of the Program in Molecular Pathological Epidemiology at Brigham.

Study co-author Dr. Andrew Chan, chief of the Clinical and Translational Epidemiology Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, agreed.

“This paper adds to the growing evidence that illustrates the connection between diet, the gut microbiome, and risk of colorectal cancer,” he said in the Brigham news release.

Sources

  • Mass General Brigham, news release, Feb. 12, 2025

    • Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.

    Source: HealthDay

    Posted : 2025-02-14 00:00

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