According to a BBC report, a Colombian man has died of cancer, but not cancer that grew out of his own cells. Rather, the cancerous cells came from a tapeworm that had taken up residence in his digestive tract.
Called crazy and unusual by doctors at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the cancer and tapeworm Hymenolepis nana had infected a man with an immune system very much compromised by HIV.
Doctors in Colombia has tried to diagnose the man’s illness in 2013, but were unsuccessful. Described by a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the true nature of his illness was ultimately detected by officials from the CDC and the UK’s Natural History Museum.
Upon inspecting the 41-year-old man, doctors saw small tumors more than an inch-and-a-half across in multiple vital organs. Using a detailed analysis, the team was able to find the cancer cells were not of human origin.
A very unusual case
“It didn’t really make sense,” study author Atis Muehlenbachs told the BBC. “This has been the most unusual case, it caused many sleepless nights.”
Doctors first suspect shrinking cancer cells or a new type of infection, but molecular testing led to the identification of high levels of tapeworm DNA. Unfortunately, the true nature of the disease was found too late, and the man died three days later.
Peter Olson from the Natural History Museum told the BBC that there is “something very special about this species” of tape worm.
“It is able to carry out its whole lifecycle in one host and that is absolutely unique,” he said.
After infecting a host, H. nana releases thousands of eggs into the gut on a daily basis. The study authors reported that one of those eggs likely mutated and became cancerous.
“They were dividing and proliferating out of control and that is really what defines a cancer so they had a tape worm tumor,” Olson said.
While as many as 75 million people have an H. nana infection at any one time, the development of this kind of cancer is very rare, the study team said. The CDC has recommended people reduce their risk of infection by washing their hands and cooking raw vegetables.
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Feature Image: Wikimedia Commons
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