Low Abundance of in Human Colorectal Cancer Is Associated with Decreased Natural Killer Cells.

A limited number of studies have demonstrated the role of () in human colorectal cancers (CRCs). The association of abundance with the density of natural killer (NK) cells has not been investigated before. In this study, the abundance in 60 CRC specimens, 20 adenoma (AD) specimens, and 29 normal colorectal tissues (NCs) specimens was investigated using the fluorescence in situ hybridization of 16S ribosomal RNA. The density of NK cells was detected using immunofluorescence in 28 CRC specimens, 12 AD specimens, and 22 NC specimens. The presence of in NCs (48.28%) was detected significantly higher than that in the AD (20.00%, .044) and CRC (23.33%, .018) specimens. The abundance of in NCs (32.73 ± 7.24) was also found to be significantly higher than that in AD (8.91 ± 5.89, .029) and CRC (5.63 ± 1.67, = .003) specimens. In addition, the density of NKp30 NK cells in NCs (51.14 ± 4.84) was significantly higher than that in the AD (6.10 ± 1.31) and CRC (1.72 ± 0.40) specimens ( < .001). Moreover, a positive association of abundance with NKp30 NK cells density in the colorectal samples ( < .001) was observed. The low abundance of in the CRC tissues was associated with the decreased NK cells, which suggested that this might contribute to the progression of CRC by decreasing the number of NK cells.Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/01635581.2021.1944649.