Two children in Japan “caught” cancer from their mothers, in a rare medical phenomenon, according to a new case.
They probably inhaled cancer cells from their mothers, each of whom inadvertently had cervical cancer.
The children developed lung cancer years later.
A baby has to go through the mother’s cervix during labor and doctors think the cancer cells are directed to the amniotic fluid surrounding the baby, which then inhales the cells as they open their mouths to breathe and cry.
It is extraordinarily rare (only 20 cases have been documented) and children were not diagnosed for nearly two to ten years after their respective births, scientists said in a case study in the New England Journal of Medicine, published this month.
In rare cases, a baby may inhale cervical cancer cells that have drifted into the amniotic fluid of the birth canal, causing them to develop lung cancer years later.
Scientists estimate that approximately one in every 500,000 mothers with cancer transmits the disease to their baby during childbirth.
And only one in 1,000 mothers has cancer during pregnancy.
Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer for women, hitting about 570,000 women a year and killing 311,000 worldwide.
And women are diagnosed at the average age of 50, most cases occur between the ages of 35 and 44.
Doctors advise that women begin to be examined at the age of 25 through physical exams and pap smears, but because cancer is not common during the most fertile years of a woman’s life, therefore, it may not be the most common. more important for those people trying to conceive.
And almost half of all pregnancies (about 45%) are still unplanned.
Therefore, women are often not tested by prenatal examination before becoming pregnant.
Without this, cancer is difficult to detect.
In addition, even if a woman becomes pregnant while having cancer or is diagnosed with cancer during pregnancy, it is very rare for cancer to affect her developing baby.
But there are, of course, exceptions, as was the case with the two children described in the case report.
There is no way to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that cancer was transmitted from mothers to babies, but there were some telltale signs.
On the one hand, the location of the mothers’ cancers facilitated their transmission.
The cervix is located at the bottom of the uterus and at the top of the vaginal opening.
A baby develops in the womb, surrounded by amniotic fluid, which is like a liquid isolate to protect it and provide it with water, nutrients and other chemicals that make up the mother.
While in the womb, a baby does not breathe as adults do. Instead, it absorbs oxygen through the umbilical cord and placenta.
Therefore, even if cervical tumor cells end up in amniotic fluid, there are not many opportunities for them to be transmitted to the baby.
But as the baby arrives through the birth canal, there is a brief window of opportunity to inhale the amniotic fluid from near the cervix, allowing tumor cells to enter the lungs.
The first child was diagnosed with lung cancer about 23 months after birth, when he developed a persistent cough.
After several rounds of chemotherapy, immunotherapy and surgery to remove the lobe from one of his lungs, the boy ended up in remission and became cancer-free a year later.
Unfortunately, her mother’s cancer spread throughout her body and she eventually died.
Earlier, however, scientists sequenced genes from the mother’s and child’s tumors and saw a clear link between them, suggesting that the cancer had been passed from mother to baby.
The mother of the second child died when she was only two years old.
He showed no signs of illness for four more years, but at age six he had chest pain and was also diagnosed with lung cancer.
Genomic sequencing showed that her tumor was also related to that of the mother and the tumor was positive for HPV, STI, which is a common cause of cervical cancers, but not lung cancers.
Taken together, these tests suggested he probably “caught” his mother’s cancer.
The boy had to have one of his lungs removed, but he was left alive and free of cancer 15 months later.