Does Mask Wearing Result in an Increased Potential for Lung Cancer?

Here is a little 2 plus 2 for anyone who thinks for themselves.

This is from Microsoft News:

How much bacteria is on your face mask?

Doctors say after each wear, bacteria from even a healthy wearer’s own respiratory droplets collect on the inside of a mask and could contain airborne pathogens.

Even more, many users choose to reuse the same mask for multiple days without properly sanitizing the cloth...

Video taken from under a microscope at FAU shows a wide range of micro-organisms including bacteria, yeast, and fungus.   

Grant said, "It's very common that we will eat and then put our mask back on and if we are sweating a little we are creating a really nice soup for this bacteria."   

So what is the deal with this type of microbiota in the lower airwave (the mouth)?

From a new paper, Lower Airway Dysbiosis Affects Lung Cancer Progression, published in the journal, Cancer Discovery:

 Culture-independent techniques show that the lower airways of normal individuals commonly harbor oral bacteria such as Prevotella and Veillonella (15, 17–19). Our group has described that lower airway dysbiosis characterized by enrichment with oral commensals is associated with increased host inflammatory tone in the lung of healthy individuals (15, 19). This same lower airway dysbiotic signature was found to differentiate between subjects with lung cancer and subjects with benign lung nodules (16). Importantly, we have shown in humans and in ex vivo experimental models that this dysbiotic signature likely triggers transcriptomic signatures (PI3K and MAPK) previously described in non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC; refs. 16, 20), including the p53 mutation pathway (21). 

-RW