Fecal bacteriology of colonic polyp patients and control patients.

Feces from 25 subjects with colonic polyps (multiple adenomatous, large single, or single with atypia) and from 25 matched control subjects were studied by detailed quantitative aerobic and anaerobic techniques, using a large battery of culture media and several atmospheric conditions. Over 55% of organisms detected on microscopic count were recovered anaerobically. In several cases, there were significantly different numbers of organisms of specific types recovered from the two different populations studied. However, these differed from organisms with "statistical significance" noted in a previous study from this laboratory involving two different diet groups (Japanese Americans on either a Japanese or a Western diet). Specific differences in bacteriology between groups with different risks of bowel cancer, noted in earlier British studies, were not noted in our present or previous study.