Saturday, June 8, 2024 - US doctors and scientists are currently investigating whether the COVID-19 virus is to blame for an “unusual” spike in rare and deadly cancers after the pandemic.
The group of medical experts banded together to launch
research studies and share data after concluding there was compelling evidence
among their own patients to suggest a link between COVID and cancer diagnoses,
the Washington Post reported.
“I’ve been in practice 23 years and have never seen anything
like this,” Kashyap Patel, an oncologist in South Carolina and CEO of Carolina
Blood and Cancer Care Associates, said of the uptick of cases he’s witnessed.
Patel, who is calling for a national registry to analyze
trends, said he has has already collected data from dozens of his own patients
showing a possible link between unusual cancers and long COVID.
“Hopefully, we’re wrong,” Afshin Beheshti, president of the
COVID-19 International Research Team, said. “But everything is, unfortunately,
pushing toward that being the case.”
Beheshti, whose background is in cancer biology and is among
those trying to piece together the puzzle, said he noticed during the pandemic
that cases and studies were showing COVID was causing widespread inflammation
and infection in organs susceptible to cancer stem cell development.
“The signals seemed to be related to early cancer changes,”
he said.
There are no real-world data or definitive studies yet on
whether COVID has actually contributed to a spike in cancer cases.
The US-based doctors are calling on the federal government
to prioritize the research given such answers could affect treatment for cancer
patients, as well as management of the disease, over the next several decades.
“We are completely under-investigating this virus,” Douglas
C. Wallace, a University of Pennsylvania geneticist and evolutionary biologist,
told the outlet.
“The effects of repeatedly getting this throughout our lives
is going to be much more significant than people are thinking.”
“I would say most governments don’t want to think about long
COVID and much less long COVID and cancer,” he continued. “It cost them so much
to deal with COVID. So there is very little funding for the long-term effects
of the virus. I don’t think that’s a wise choice.”
Wallace is currently probing how and if COVID affects cell
energy production and cancer vulnerability.
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