Abstract
More than one million new cancer cases occur worldwide every year. Although many clinical trials are applied and recent diagnostic tools are employed, curing cancer disease is still a great challenge for mankind. Heredity and epigenetics are the main risk factors often related to cancer. Although, the infectious etiological role in carcinogenesis was also theorized. By establishing chronic infection and inflammation in their hosts, several microorganisms were suggested to cause cell transformation. Of these suspicious microorganisms, mycoplasmas were well regarded because of their intimate parasitism with host cells, as well as their silent and insidious role during infections. This assumption has opened many questions about the real role played by mycoplasmas in oncogenesis. Herein, we presented a sum up of many studies among the hundreds which had addressed the Mycoplasma-cancer topic over the past 50 years. Research studies in this field have first started by approving the mycoplasmas malignancy potential. Indeed, using animal models and in vitro experiments in various cell lines from human and other mammalians, many mycoplasmas were proven to cause varied modifications leading to cell transformation. Moreover, many studies have looked upon the Mycoplasma-cancer subject from an epidemiological point of view. Diverse techniques were used to assess the mycoplasmas prevalence in patients with cancer from different countries. Not less than 10 Mycoplasma species were detected in the context of at least 15 cancer types affecting the brain, the breast, the lymphatic system, and different organs in the genitourinary, respiratory, gastrointestinal, and urinary tracts. Based on these revelations, one should concede that detection of mycoplasmas often linked to ‘‘wolf in sheep's clothing” is not a coincidence and might have a role in cancer. Thorough investigations are needed to better elucidate this role. This would have a substantial impact on the improvement of cancer diagnosis and its prevention.
Highlights
Cancer is a devastating disease presenting an immense burden to humanity
Zhang et al have reported that chronic infection with the two human Mycoplasma species M. fermentans and M. penetrans is associated with an overexpression of H-ras and c-myc oncogenes in C3H embryo cells, which involved malignant cell transformation in mouse [67]
Results of studies aiming to seek for Mycoplasma species in patients with gastric cancer have shown the frequent detection of M. hyorhinis. is Mycoplasma species was identified by the Southern blot technique using specific Mycoplasma rDNA probes in 11 out 23 Japanese patients with gastric cancer (48%) [89]
Summary
Cancer is a devastating disease presenting an immense burden to humanity. According to latest statistics of the International Agency for Research on Cancer affiliated to the World Health Organization, barely 18 million new cancer cases were globally recorded in 2018, of which approximately 10 million have led to death [1]. Many causes and risk factors have been pointed to promote carcinogenesis establishment and development. Among these factors, some infectious agents have been suspected. One of the suspected prokaryotes in malignancy are mycoplasmas. As these atypical bacteria are notorious for their capacity to implement a low-grade chronic inflammatory condition during cell infection without. Roughout this review, we will attempt to highlight the Mycoplasma-cancer relationship. Twenty years from the first review describing this relationship [14] and ten years after the second [15], we are today recalling what has been performed in this regard along with the new findings
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