Tapeworm may have been the likely cause of cancer of a 41-year-old man from Colombia, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests in its new paper.
In what could be the first confirmed case of cancer transmission from parasite to human, the man, whose name remains withheld and who's been diagnosed with HIV, was discovered to have many large tumors during a cross-sectional scan of his chest. The doctors then performed a biopsy, a standard diagnostic procedure to identify if the sample is benign or malignant.
Based on the results, the cells collected exhibited cancer-like properties such as their destructiveness, but they were much smaller than regular human cancer cells. The doctors then asked for help from the CDC.
The CDC's resident pathologist Atis Muehlenbachs and his team then proceeded to study the sample. Initially, they confirmed that the cells exhibited cancer-like properties including rapid multiplication, but they were also strangely different in that the cells were fused together. They first thought that this was a new kind of microorganism infection, but more tests revealed the collected cancer cells contained traces of DNA traced back to a dwarf tapeworm, which was later corroborated by a tapeworm expert working in a London museum.
The bizarre case highlights the complexity of the development of cancer among humans and animals. For example, it's been known that an elephant don't grow cancer while certain sea creatures are at higher risk. Parasites that can invade the body may also contribute to the development of a number of cancers, but they occur mostly because of the overactive immune response of the body against these organisms. The CDC scientists also wanted to know whether parasites and other organisms that could penetrate the body have the ability to deliver cancer cells or whether the growths of tumors are caused by the presence of the parasitic cells.
Either way, the CDC believed that the man have obtained the tapeworm eggs from ingesting contaminated food or water, as well as being exposed to fecal matter with the eggs. Because of his existing condition that compromised his immunity, the tapeworm rapidly increased in number, causing some of the cells to invade the rest of his body.
