The role of probiotics in Cancer Prevention

Backgrounds & Diet makes an important contribution to cancer. Evidence from a wide range of sources supports the view that the colonic microflora is involved in the etiology of cancer. This has led to intense interest in factors such as probiotics that can modulate gut microflora and its metabolism. Article used in this study, were collected by searching in informative bank such as web of knowledge, Science direct, willy and Scopus, The keywords probiotics, Cancer, Lactobacillus and Bifidobacreium were used for searching. Published date of articles was between 1995 to 2012. The strongest evidence for anticancer effects of probiotics comes from animal studies, and evidence from human studies (epidemiology and experimental) is still limited. There are several possible mechanisms that might explain how probiotic bacteria might protect against tumor development in the colon. However, questions such as what is the major contributing mechanism for a particular bacterial strain or how are the different mechanisms linked are questions to which we currently do not have the answers. It is possible that different strains target different mechanisms. All of the mechanisms have various degrees of support, mainly originating from in vitro and animal experiments, and some of them even have some support from human clinical studies. More work needs to be done to identify the specific strains and strain characteristics responsible for specific antitumor effects and the mechanisms by which these effects are mediated. More clinical trials are needed to better understand the exact underlying mechanisms, and to strengthen the suggestions that probiotics could play a major role in preventing colonic cancers.