A doctor in Colombia came across a very strange case: cancer cells that came from a tapeworm. The case is unique and had never been seen before.
The 41-year-old patient came to his doctor in Colombia with fever, cough and weight loss lasting several months. He had previously been diagnosed with HIV but was not taking his medication. CT scans showed tumours in the lungs and lymph nodes, but a biopsy of a tumour showed very strange cells. They were ten times smaller than human cancer cells, yet they were clustered together and multiplying fast.
The doctor asked the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for help, and there they discovered that the cells' DNA came from a dwarf tapeworm, H. nana. The result was astonishing, because the cells did not look like tapeworm cells, but the tests confirmed it.
Scientists believe that AIDS had weakened the patient's immune system, making it easier for the tapeworm to infect him and grow. Eventually the worm's cells mutated into cancer cells that spread through his body.
The case is strange and the first of its kind, but scientists say AIDS and tapeworm infections are so common that other cases probably exist and have not yet been detected.
The patient died 72 hours after diagnosis. There was no chance to find out which treatments might help in such a case: drugs against parasites are not expected to work against this cancer, and cancer drugs may have limited effect.
The case was published in the New England Journal of Medicine on 5 November 2015.
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