Friday, June 7, 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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