Cancer: a word that can ruin someone's life in seconds. Anything to do with his future plans, his current life, his parents, his children, his health, his friends, and lovers all come crashing down like a tidal wave. Boom. Gone. The word sounds muffled and far away in his ears as the doctor tells him—this isn't true, I could never be the one to get cancer. My child is too young to have brain cancer. My husband and I just got married, he can't have cancer. My brother is my best friend, please God, he just can't have cancer. Cancer is a silent killer, and it is so difficult to stop, even if it is diagnosed before it is too late. If there is anything positive about the situation, at least cancer is not contagious and your own cells have to malfunction in order to get it—or that was how it used to be.
From a news story covered on Fox News Health, it was discovered that a Colombian man actually obtained cancer cells from a tapeworm that he had consumed. For several months, the 41-year-old Columbia man had experienced a fever, weight loss, and a cough. He had previously been diagnosed with HIV, and the doctors believed he was experiencing an infection from his suppressed immune system. However, this did not explain his huge loss in weight. The weight loss could have been a side effect of his medication—if I had to guess—but doctors said he had not been taking his medicine. So what does this have to do with cancer?
Well, the doctors decided to perform a CT scan to look for anything that could explain his random fever, cough, and weight loss. They ended up discovering tumors in his lungs and lymph nodes—cancer. However, his doctors claimed that the tumor cells that they found were very bizarre and not cells that they would consider human—Um...wait, what?
His doctors quickly viewed the cells under a microscope and found that they acted like cancer cells—multiplied quickly and crowded together—but they did not appear human as they were 10 times smaller than human cells. (And, mind you, a human blood cell is about 4 micrometers, super tiny!)
Stumped, the doctors decided to do a bunch of tests—I mean, what else is a doctor to do in this weird situation?—and eventually found a sample of DNA from a tapeworm called H. nana in the man's tumor. So, does that mean the tumor cells came from the tapeworm in the man? Yes, yes it does.
The doctors said they were surprised because the cells didn't look like tissue from this parasite, but after several more tests, they could confirm that the DNA was from H. nana. This explains the man's huge weight loss and why it coincided with his fever and cough.
Researchers hypothesized that, because the man had HIV and a suppressed immune system, the tapeworm was able to keep growing, and mutations eventually developed in the tapeworm's cells, leading to cancer.
Sadly, the patient died 72 hours after they figured out he had a tapeworm. Even worse, the doctors may not even know how to help another person who may have a tapeworm with cancer, because the drugs that treat tapeworms may not be able to stop the cancer cells from growing. They believe it may be possible that human cancer treatment may be able to work against parasite cells, as well.
H. nana is also one of the most common tapeworms in the world—infecting up to 75 million people worldwide—yikes.
Not only does it appear that cancer can be transmitted through a parasite, tapeworms can also infect anyone pretty much at any time—feel free to freak out now.
I'm just kidding. As long as you make sure your meat is cooked—as tapeworm larva can be in the muscle cells of animals—and that you aren't using them as a weight loss techniques, you shouldn't get cancer from tapeworms.
It's scary how fast diseases can change and infect the human population. Be smart, cook your food, wash your hands, and eat your veggies.
