Rare and ‘unusual’ cancers are emerging after the Covid pandemic – and doctors fear an unlikely culprit is to blame

Doctors across the US are reporting an alarming health trend in the wake of the pandemic.

Since about 2021, they have been noticing rare and unusual cancers in patients who should not be affected – many of them young and without any family history of diseases.

Cancers that typically affect seniors in their 70s and 80s are now also affecting people in their 40s, including bile duct cancer and rare blood cancers.

The pandemic forced people to isolate and delay preventive care measures that would screen for various types of cancer for fear of becoming infected.

But doctors don’t believe this is the leading cause of advanced, rare cases of cancer. Instead, they argue that Covid itself is to blame.

Bob and Bonnie Krall [shown left to right] were diagnosed with three types of cancer in a fourteen-month period, despite having no genetic predisposition. Both previously had Covid. Photo courtesy of Ms. Krall’s Facebook page

The Kralls also discovered that several of their neighbors had been diagnosed with the same rare form of cancer. Photo courtesy of Ms. Krall’s Facebook page

Dr. Kashyap Patel, an oncologist from North Carolina, has seen this firsthand. In 2021, he saw a patient in his forties with a rare bile duct cancer: WHAT IS A BILE DUCT?, a cancer that usually affects people in their seventies and eighties.

Subsequently, several other patients he met were diagnosed with a range of different cancers, something he says he has never seen in his 20 years of practicing medicine.

One couple he examined was Bob and Bonnie Krall of Fort Mill, South Carolina, who were diagnosed with three types of cancer in a fourteen-month period despite having no genetic predisposition.

Mr. Krall was diagnosed with a rare chronic blood and bone marrow cancer, while Mrs. Krall had a malignancy in her abdomen that weighed eight and a half pounds, according to the Washingtonpost.

Mr. Krall later learned that several of his neighbors had 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 post-Covid

Viruses have been known to accelerate cancer since the 1960s, and researchers claim that a quarter of all cancers worldwide originate from HPV, Epstein-Barr virus and hepatitis B.

Researchers have focused on the effects of Covid itself and persistent symptoms even after recovery, a phenomenon known as long Covid.

However, they have not established a link between the Covid vaccines and cancer risk, although research into the long-term effects of vaccines is still ongoing.

They don’t know exactly why vaccines don’t seem to be linked to cancer, but one possible explanation could be that Covid vaccines, even Johnson & Johnson’s viral vector vaccine, do not contain the live virus, which in rare cases could lead to cancer . disease.

Science has shown that coronavirus proteins promote the replication of several viruses known to revive dormant cancer cells, increasing the likelihood of being diagnosed with breast, stomach and blood cancers.

Research into the link between Covid and cancer is relatively new, as the pandemic only started four years ago.

A 2023 report in the journal Biochemistry has described several ways the coronavirus can alter genes that usually stop tumors from forming and cause widespread inflammation throughout the body.

This inflammation can 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 shows that the virus can revive dormant cancer cells and cause inflammation throughout the body that can lead to the proliferation of cancer cells.

The above graph shows the change in cancer rates around the world

And a team in Colorado has begun investigating the possibility that the coronavirus revives cancer cells in mice.

a preprint The study released in April found that when mice that previously had cancer but recovered were injected with the coronavirus, the cancer cells multiplied and spread in the lungs.

The flu virus turned out to do the same. Researchers like Dr. Ashani Weeraratna of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Heath weren’t exactly surprised by this finding.

She said it makes sense that “something like flu or Covid that causes inflammation could change the microenvironment of the immune system,” adding: “It’s rare for the data to be so striking.”

Dr. Weeraratna said: “Reducing the risk of infection may be of particular importance for cancer patients,” Weeraratna said.

Based on the study’s findings, the measures vulnerable patients take from the early days of the pandemic – wearing masks, avoiding crowded places, getting vaccines – 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 with rare cancers and 15 couples with new cancers since the pandemic began four years ago.

He suggested that becoming 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 started noticing a rise in cancer cases.

A 2023 report in the journal Lancet Oncology looked at 2.4 million adults diagnosed with cancer in 2018, 2019 and 2020. The number of new cancer cases fell after the start of the pandemic, but increased again at the end of the year.

The chance of being diagnosed with advanced-stage cancer was more than seven percent higher in 2020 than the year before.

Dr. Xuesong Han, a top researcher at the American Cancer Society and lead author of the Lancet Oncology study, said biological mechanisms underlying the coronavirus may play a role.

He said: ‘I do not have the data to support this view. But it is an important question to follow up on.”