highly significantp = 0.01
Early evidence for the association of specific microbiome components with the earliest genomic changes seen in IBD-CRC comes from recent epigenetic studies, where Fusobacterium colonization is associated with pro-carcinogenic methylation changes in the non-neoplastic colonic mucosa of 86 patients; this association remained highly significant (OR 16.2, p = 0.01) in a multivariate analysis that included recognized clinical risk factors such as age, duration of disease and surrogate markers of inflammation severity ( 55 ).