CANCER PATIENT’S TUMOURS DISAPPEAR AFTER COVID

For a 61-year-old U.K. man, having COVID-19 may have helped save his life.

The unidentified Cornwall man, whose case is documented in the British Journal of Haematology, was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma during a checkup last summer, according to Wales Online. His week went from bad to worse a few days later when he was rushed to hospital with a severe case of COVID-19. After a gruelling 11 days of intensive care, during which he was put on oxygen to help heal his damaged lungs, the patient was discharged, fully recovered from the virus.

When he returned for a CT scan a few weeks later, the tumours that once dotted his torso were almost all gone. While this sort of spontaneous remission has been seen before, it is exceedingly rare and one of the doctors who treated the man said she believes the virus that sent his immune system into overdrive may have also led to the destruction of the malignant cells.

“We think COVID-19 triggered an anti-tumour immune response,” said Sarah Challoner, a physician at the Royal Cornwall Hospital.

While Challoner said the infection likely prompted the wide-scale production of T-cells that wiped out the virus and the cancer simultaneously, others weren’t prepared to go quite that far.

“At this stage it’s too early to draw any conclusions from these cases — it’s quite possibly a coincidence,” said Martin Ledwick, Cancer Research UK’S head information nurse. “Anyone undergoing cancer treatment should continue to follow the advice of their doctors, as well as protecting themselves from catching COVID-19. And we encourage all who can to take up the vaccine.”

Around 1,000 Canadians were diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma in 2020 with roughly 100 patients believed to have succumbed to the disease that is caused when white blood cells rapidly grow and spread to the lymph nodes, according to the Canadian Cancer Society. While symptoms can vary, telltale signs of this form of cancer include swollen nodes in the neck, underarm, groin or chest. The disease responds well to chemotherapy, which is generally the preferred method of treatment, said Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England.

“The message for anyone with cancer is that deliberately exposing yourself to COVID-19 in the hope it will heal you is much more likely to lead to your untimely demise than to a cure,” he said. “I don’t think we fully understand the mechanisms, but some immune response is most likely to be the reason.

“Tumours often evade the immune system and, in this case, COVID infection seems to have kick-started the immune system very effectively.”