After controlling for sex and age, we found that factors generally associated with good health, such as fruit consumption and mean corpuscular volume, were elevated with PC2, while factors associated with poor health, including BMI and circulating levels of the liver proteins alanine aminotransferase, and C-reactive protein, were lower in donors with a more cancer-like, PC2-high microbiome (Fig. 8, C and D; and Data S1, table 19). This evidence concerns the gene CRP and cancer.