ABSTRACT
The devastating complications of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID19) result from the dysfunctional immune response of an individual following the initial severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARSCoV2) infection. Multiple toxic stressors and behaviors contribute to underlying immune system dysfunction. SARSCoV2 exploits the dysfunctional immune system to trigger a chain of events, ultimately leading to COVID19. The authors have previously identified a number of contributing factors (CFs) common to myriad chronic diseases. Based on these observations, it was hypothesized that there may be a significant overlap between CFs associated with COVID19 and gastrointestinal cancer (GIC). Thus, in the present study, a streamlined dotproduct approach was used initially to identify potential CFs that affect COVID19 and GIC directly (i.e., the simultaneous occurrence of CFs and disease in the same article). The nascent character of the COVID19 core literature (~1yearold) did not allow sufficient time for the direct effects of numerous CFs on COVID19 to emerge from laboratory experiments and epidemiological studies. Therefore, a literaturerelated discovery approach was used to augment the COVID19 core literaturebased 'direct impact' CFs with discoverybased 'indirect impact' CFs [CFs were identified in the nonCOVID19 biomedical literature that had the same biomarker impact pattern (e.g., hyperinflammation, hypercoagulation, hypoxia, etc.) as was shown in the COVID19 literature]. Approximately 2,250 candidate direct impact CFs in common between GIC and COVID19 were identified, albeit some being variants of the same concept. As commonality proof of concept, 75 potential CFs that appeared promising were selected, and 63 overlapping COVID19/GIC potential/candidate CFs were validated with biological plausibility. In total, 42 of the 63 were overlapping direct impact COVID19/GIC CFs, and the remaining 21 were candidate GIC CFs that overlapped with indirect impact COVID19 CFs. On the whole, the present study demonstrates that COVID19 and GIC share a number of common risk/CFs, including behaviors and toxic exposures, that impair immune function. A key component of immune system health is the removal of those factors that contribute to immune system dysfunction in the first place. This requires a paradigm shift from traditional Western medicine, which often focuses on treatment, rather than prevention.