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Comment by huy-nguyen | Hacker News Reader

This is very interesting. It looks like a few subtypes of colon cancers may join the list of cancers caused by bacteria (H. pylori in stomach cancer) or virus (HPV in cervical cancer, Hepatitis in liver cancer). Every bit of preventive care against cancer helps and hopefully a vaccine against these bacteria can save many lives in the future.

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Interestingly, there is some push-back against treating H. pylori too aggressively. While it is linked to stomach cancer, there is also some evidence that losing H. pylori is linked with increases in other diseases like type-2 diabetes (but then again, increased rates of type-2 diabetes are linked to losing pretty much any kind of stomach/gut flora). The microbiome is a delicate thing...

Is there such a thing as a vaccine against a bacteria? I thought vaccines were for viral infections.

There very much are! For example, Diptheria, Pertussis, and Tetanus are all caused by bacteria, and we have vaccines for all three

The interesting things about diptheria and tetanus is that the vaccine is not targeted against the bacteria, but rather the toxin they produce.

If you've been vaccination against both of these diseases and are exposed, your immune system will eventually mount an attack against the bacteria, but already has antibodies floating around that inactivate the toxin, which is what is responsible for the severity of the diseases.

Probably the most popular of these are against pneumococcal bacteria (Prevnar, Pneumovax...).

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