Clear links found between inflammation, bacterial communities and cancer

What if a key factor ultimately behind a cancer was not a genetic defect but ecological?

Ecologists have long known that when some major change disturbs an environment in some way, ecosystem structure is likely to change dramatically. Further, this shift in interconnected species' diversity, abundances, and relationships can in turn have a transforming effect on health of the whole landscape -- causing a rich woodland or grassland to become permanently degraded, for example -- as the ecosystem becomes unstable and then breaks down the environment.

For this reason, it should come as no surprise that a significant disturbance in the human body can profoundly alter the makeup of otherwise stable microbial communities co-existing within it and that changes in the internal ecology known as the human microbiome can result in unexpected and drastic consequences for human health.