Effect of pesco-vegetarian diet and non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs on colorectal cancer prevention in PIRC rats

The study explored how a pesco-vegetarian diet (PVD), alone or combined with non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs (aspirin or sulindac), influences colorectal cancer (CRC) development in genetically predisposed rats. PVD significantly reduced intestinal tumors, especially when paired with high-dose aspirin. The diet and drug treatments altered gut microbiota, notably affecting certain bacterial genera like Colidextribacter. A higher bacterial diversity in the PVD group was linked to fewer tumors, suggesting a protective role of diet-modified microbiota in CRC prevention. Animals fed PVD with or without drug supplementation showed a significant reduction in the number of the intestinal tumours compared to the control group (CTR diet), while regarding NSAIDs treatment a significant effect was observed with the highest dose of ASA. Both the diets (PVD or CTR) selected specific Amplicon Sequence Variants in all pharmacological treatments, with the abundance of the genera Colidextribacter affected by the Aspirin dosage. Environmental fitting analysis assessed to correlate the changes in bacterial diversity and tumours revealed in the PVD group a negative correlation between the number of colon tumours and bacterial diversity.