Doctors across the United States are reporting an alarming health trend in the wake of the pandemic.
Since about 2021, they are noticing rare and unusual cancers in patients who should not qualify, many of them young and without a family history of the disease.
Cancers that normally affect people in their 70s and 80s now affect people in their 40s, including rare blood and bile duct cancers.
The pandemic forced people to isolate themselves and postpone preventive care measures that would detect various types of cancer, for fear of becoming infected.
But doctors do not believe this is the main factor in rare and advanced cases of cancer. Instead, they posit that Covid itself is to blame.
Bob and Bonnie Krall (left to right) were diagnosed with three types of cancer in a 14-month period despite having no genetic predispositions. They both had Covid previously. Photo courtesy of Ms. Krall’s Facebook page.
The Kralls also learned that several of their neighbors had been diagnosed with the same rare cancers. Photo courtesy of Ms. Krall’s Facebook page.
North Carolina oncologist Dr. Kashyap Patel has seen it firsthand. In 2021, he cared for a patient in his 40s who had a rare bile duct cancer, WHAT IS A BILE DUCT?, a cancer that typically affects people between 70 and 80 years old.
Later, many other patients he met were diagnosed with a variety of different cancers, something he said he had never seen in his two decades of practicing medicine.
One couple he investigated was Bob and Bonnie Krall of Fort Mill, South Carolina, who in a 14-month period were diagnosed with three types of cancer between them despite having no genetic predisposition.
Mr. Krall was diagnosed with a rare chronic blood and bone marrow cancer, while Mrs. Krall was diagnosed with a malignant tumor in her abdomen that weighed eight and a half pounds, according to the Washington Post.
Mr. Krall later learned that several of his neighbors suffered from the same type of cancer: “It’s like a cold.” It seems like everyone has it.’
Dr. Kashyap Patel, a North Carolina oncologist, has treated patients in their 40s with rare and advanced cancers after Covid.
Viruses have been known to accelerate cancer since the 1960s, and researchers maintain that a quarter of all cancers worldwide originated with HPV, Epstein-Barr virus and hepatitis B.
Researchers have focused on the effects of Covid itself, as well as lingering symptoms even after recovery, a phenomenon known as long Covid.
However, they have not discovered links between Covid vaccines and cancer risk, although research is being done into the long-term effects of the vaccines.
They’re not exactly sure why the vaccines don’t appear to be linked to cancer, but one possible explanation could be that Covid vaccines, including Johnson & Johnson’s viral vector vaccine, do not contain the live virus that, in rare cases, could cause cancer. disease.
Science has shown that coronavirus proteins drive the replication of several viruses that are known to awaken dormant cancer cells, increasing their chances of being diagnosed with breast, stomach and blood cancers.
Research into links between Covid and cancer is relatively new, given that the pandemic began only four years ago.
A 2023 report in the magazine. Biochemistry detailed different means by which the coronavirus can change genes that generally prevent tumor formation and cause widespread inflammation throughout the body.
This inflammation could lead to the development of cancer cells in various organs, including the lungs, pancreas, and colon.
The photo shows the coronavirus indicated in yellow, emerging from the surface of cells, indicated in blue/pink, grown in a laboratory. Research suggests that the virus can awaken dormant cancer cells and cause inflammation throughout the body that can lead to the proliferation of cancer cells.
The graph above shows the change in cancer case rates around the world.
And a Colorado team has begun investigating the possibility that the coronavirus gives life to cancer cells in mice.
TO prepress published in April showed that when mice that had previously had cancer but recovered were injected with the coronavirus, the cancer cells multiplied and spread in the lungs.
The flu virus has been shown to do the same thing. Researchers like Dr. Ashani Weeraratna of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health weren’t exactly surprised by this finding.
He said it makes sense that “something like the flu or Covid that triggers inflammation could change in the immune microenvironment,” adding that “it’s rare that the data is so surprising.”
Dr. Weeraratna said, “Mitigating the risk of infection may be of particular importance for cancer patients,” Weeraratna said.
Based on the study’s findings, the measures taken by vulnerable patients from the early days of the pandemic (wearing masks, avoiding crowded places, getting vaccinated) become even more important.’
Dr. Patel is now investigating the connection himself. Based on data from more than 300 patients, his office has registered more than 15 patients with multiple cancers, about 35 who had rare cancers and 15 couples with new cancers since the pandemic began four years ago.
He postulated that being infected with the virus more than once has an even greater impact, as does pandemic-related stress, by exacerbating inflammation throughout the body that could reactivate cancer cells.
Even during the first wave of the Covid pandemic, until December 31, 2020, doctors began to notice an increase in cancer cases.
A 2023 report in the magazine. Lancet oncology looked at 2.4 million adults who had been diagnosed with cancer in 2018, 2019 and 2020. New cancer cases decreased after the start of the pandemic, but increased again at the end of the year.
The odds of being diagnosed with advanced stage 4 cancer were more than seven percent higher in 2020 compared to the previous year.
Dr. Xuesong Han, a leading investigator with the American Cancer Society and lead author of the Lancet Oncology study, said biological mechanisms underlying the coronavirus could be at play.
He said: “I have no data to support this opinion.” But it is an important issue that needs to be followed up on.’