COVID-19 is Out of Proportion in African Americans. This Will Come as No Surprise…

As the COVID-19 crisis unfolds, it is clear that the disease is affecting African American populations disproportionately. For example, in our home state of Alabama, African Americans comprise 37.5% of laboratory-confirmed cases and 47.4% of deaths, despite only being 26.8% of the population, according to publicly available statistics on April 21, 2020. In Louisiana, 56.25% of COVID-related deaths were among Blacks, even though only 32.7% of the population is black. In Michigan, while 14.1% of the population is black, 33% of COVID-19 cases are among Blacks and African Americans, as are 40% of the deaths. However, none of this should come as a surprise.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7237375/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjmed.2020.04.00

New Insights Into the Cancer–Microbiome–Immune Axis: Decrypting a Decade of Discoveries

The past decade has witnessed groundbreaking advances in the field of microbiome research. An area where immense implications of the microbiome have been demonstrated is tumor biology. The microbiome affects tumor initiation and progression through direct effects on the tumor cells and indirectly through manipulation of the immune system. It can also determine response to cancer therapies and predict disease progression and survival. Modulation of the microbiome can be harnessed to potentiate the efficacy of immunotherapies and decrease their toxicity. In this review, we comprehensively dissect recent evidence regarding the interaction of the microbiome and anti-tumor immune machinery and outline the critical questions which need to be addressed as we further explore this dynamic colloquy