The tumor tapeworm killed a man – Interia

Today, November 6 (11:48)

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Is the infection of tapeworm You can get cancer? It turns out that yes

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In 2013,. 41-year-old Colombian reported to the doctors who had a problem with a diagnosis of his condition. Only now it managed to determine what was wrong with him, and the case was described in the “New England Journal of Medicine”. One man seven years earlier HIV positive, but not yet started treatment. As it turned out, this fact had deadly consequences for him.

In the body of the patient is detected a plurality of solid tumors, some even with a diameter of more than 4 cm. Histopathological studies have shown that many of them are 10-fold lower than human, which means that they have unusual origin. The solutions to this puzzle searched for a long time. There were even intriguing theories about the process of shrinking human tumor cells or unknown medicine kind of infection. But it turned out that cancer cells contain large amounts of DNA typical for tapeworms, which would mean that they are not of human origin.

Unfortunately, the patient’s condition was so severe that he could not be saved. He died just 72 hours after the discovery of DNA tapeworm. Further studies have shown that man was infected dwarf tapeworm (Hymenolepiasis nana), a rare species of parasite, whose life cycle extends in the body of a host, without intermediate host (in the case of human villi and in the light of the small intestine). It is estimated that the world is it infected up to 75 million people.

As much as 90 percent. kilkucentymetrowego body dwarf tapeworm is a reproductive system that every day throws to the host organism thousands of eggs.

The researchers speculate that one of the eggs of the tapeworm penetrated beyond the bowel, has been difficult to understand the mutation and transformed into cancerous tissue. Then ran through the entire process chain, like a typical cancer invasion. Unfortunately, there is still more questions than answers about this extraordinary event. Because the patient died so soon after the detection of DNA tapeworm, it was impossible to accurately test the parasite.