Professor Luke O'Neill

speaker

1,535 appearances 7 recordings 2 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 3 Sep

Professor Luke O'Neill’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 7 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 3.

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Show Me the Science with Luke O'Neill · The Science of Gut Health · 21 May 2026 podcast

And that's why it's important to get rid of it.

Now, why would it do that?

Well, it causes inflammation, something I've often spoken about.

And if you irritate the gut,

with a bacteria that increases the risk of mutations in the cells in the gut that give rise to its humor developing.

So the irritation, like an irritant, and we know many irritants cause cancer, so do bacteria, and in particular Helicobacter was linked to gastric cancer, very importantly.

Another very important one, almost 20 odd years ago, Fusobacterium.

Now you're going to be hearing lots of long names of the names of these species, because each bacteria species has a really complicated name.

An increased risk of colorectal cancer in that case.

Another one, bacteroides fragilis, that was shown again to increase the risk of colorectal cancer.

And one reason for that is that type of bacteria makes a nasty toxin, because many bacteria make toxins, that will disrupt the epithelium, which is in the gut.

That's the name of the barrier in the gut.

causing real irritation and increasing the risk of colorectal cancer.

And then one last example that I like, because it's relevant to my own research, a bacteria called Enterococcus faecalis.

That will irritate the gut hugely and damage the DNA.

And most cancers are actually caused by a mutation in the DNA.

And the gene changes and you give rise to the overexpression of a nasty broken protein that promotes cancer development.

So all that's been kicking around for a while, that those bacteria increase risk.

Now, of course, people have tried then to clear these bacteria in various ways.

You can't selectively take out one species.

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