Impact of radiotherapy on gut microbiota

Pelvic irradiation has been proved to be successful for the treatment of various type of cancer but high proportion of patients receiving radiation treatment unavoidably experiences serious complications increasing mortality and leading retardation of cancer treatments. Commensal gut microbiota is an important factor of the intestinal homeostasis and dysbiosys of our gut microbial symbionts can be related to the occurrence of radiation induced complications. As there is no current clinical or experimental information, however, on the impact of radiation to gut microbiota in cancer patients, we conducted a pilot observational study on the gut microbiota in patients receiving pelvic radiotherapy.