COVID-19 against cancer
When the immune system itself kills the tumor
Tatiana Pichugina, RIA Novosti
Spontaneous recovery from cancer is a rarity. And interestingly, some cases are associated with transferred infectious diseases. Medical histories of patients whose neoplasms disappeared against the background of COVID-19 have appeared in scientific journals. Experts believe that the reason is an unusual reaction of the immune system.
Unique cases during the pandemic
In January, researchers from the Royal County Hospital Cornwall in The UK published a short note in the British Journal of Hematology. They said that a 61-year-old patient was sent to them for treatment, whose kidney transplant failed three years ago. Since then, he has needed hemodialysis. Doctors diagnosed Hodgkin's lymphoma of the third stage – a malignant disease of the lymph nodes.
Soon the patient was admitted to the clinic again with pneumonia, the test for COVID-19 turned out to be positive. After 11 days he was discharged, lymphoma was not treated all this time. However, four months later, the tomography did not detect it.
A similar case was described in February by scientists from the Humanitas Research Clinic in Milan (Italy). They observed a 61-year-old man with pneumonia on the background of COVID-19, complicated by Hodgkin's lymphoma.
In the course of treatment, they noticed that the tumor in the lymph node in the bowel area is decreasing, then growing. At the same time, the patient's oncological symptoms disappeared. Subsequent tomography revealed no neoplasms.
Electoral Killers
According to doctors, the immune system in these cases reacted unusually – together with the virus destroyed cancer cells. This happens very rarely.
In a 2012 article , scientists from the University North Carolina in Chapel Hill (USA) We collected data on 18 people who had spontaneous remission of diffuse B-large cell lymphoma, one of the most common types of malignant blood diseases. Some have recovered after an infection.
The authors described observations on one of these patients, a 67–year-old woman. She went to the dentist with a swelling on her cheek. The biopsy showed that it was lymphoma. Two days before the start of chemotherapy, the patient was taken by ambulance to the hospital with a high fever, vomiting, diarrhea and cough. Doctors diagnosed pneumonia, tests revealed pathogenic bacteria Clostridium difficile in the body. The therapy was successful, and at the same time the tumor disappeared.
The connection between infections and spontaneous cure from cancer was known before. At the end of the XIX century, the American doctor William Kohli gave injections of streptococcal bacteria to cancer patients. He called it a vaccine. His contemporaries did not believe him, but nowadays scientists have proved that Koli was on the right track.
Of course, we are not talking about COVID-19 as a cure for cancer. On the contrary, oncopathology is a risk factor for viral infection. "Kolya vaccines" are now specially modified bacterial and viral strains (the most well–known are herpes viruses and adenoviruses) that infect only cancer cells.
Such "vaccines" are especially effective in combination with immunotherapy for malignant blood diseases: they not only directly destroy diseased cells, but also activate the immune system, forcing it to work selectively.
All these methods are not without drawbacks yet and are being tested. But, according to experts, in most cases cancer is not a disease that can be defeated with one drug. This means that "Kolya toxins" and oncolytic viruses have a great potential.
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