MIF and prostate cancer: In 2014 Twu and colleagues proposed a direct mechanism to explain the putative role of T.vaginalis in prostate cancer initiation and progression: the authors demonstrated that trichomonads are able to secrete a homologue of human Macrophage migration Inhibitory Factor (TvMIF), a well-known regulatory cytokine able to orchestrate proinflammatory responses, and biomarker of prostate cancer (Conroy et al., 2010).