US Doctors Probing if COVID is to Blame for ‘unusual’ Spike in Cancer After Pandemic; ‘Unusual’ Cancers Emerged After the Pandemic. Doctors Ask if COVID is to Blame, and other C-Virus related stories
:US doctors probing if COVID is to blame for ‘unusual’ spike in cancer after pandemic:
A slew of alarmed US doctors and scientists are currently investigating whether the COVID-19 virus is to blame for an “unusual pattern” of rare and deadly cancers that have been popping up in the wake of 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. —>READ MORE HERE
‘Unusual’ cancers emerged after the pandemic. Doctors ask if COVID is to blame:
Kashyap Patel looked forward to his team’s Friday lunches. All the doctors from his oncology practice would gather in the open-air courtyard under the shadow of a tall magnolia tree and catch up. The atmosphere tended to the lighthearted and optimistic. But that week, he was distressed.
It was 2021, a year into the coronavirus pandemic, and as he slid into a chair, Patel shared that he’d just seen a patient in his 40s with cholangiocarcinoma, a rare and lethal cancer of the bile ducts that typically strikes people in their 70s and 80s. Initially, there was silence, and then one colleague after another said they’d recently treated patients who had similar diagnoses. Within a year of that meeting, the office had recorded seven such cases.
“I’ve been in practice 23 years and have never seen anything like this,” Patel, CEO of Carolina Blood and Cancer Care Associates, later recalled. Asutosh Gor, another oncologist, agreed: “We were all shaken.”
There was other weirdness, too: multiple patients contending with multiple types of cancer arising almost simultaneously, and more than a dozen new cases of other rare cancers.
Increasingly, Patel was left with an unsettling thought: Could the coronavirus be inflaming the embers of cancer?
The uptick in aggressive, late-stage cancers since the dawn of the pandemic is confirmed by some early national data and a number of large cancer institutions. Many experts have mostly dismissed the trend as an expected consequence of disruptions to health care that began in 2020.
But not everyone.
The idea that some viruses can cause or accelerate cancer is hardly new. Scientists have recognized this possibility since the 1960s, and today, researchers estimate 15 to 20 percent of all cancers worldwide originate from infectious agents such as HPV, Epstein-Barr and hepatitis B. —>READ MORE HERE
Follow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
COVID-19 may be linked to rare cancers: Doctors
A new COVID variant is dominant in the US: What are its symptoms?
USA TODAY: Coronavirus Updates
YAHOO NEWS: Coronavirus Live Updates
NEW YORK POST: Coronavirus The Latest
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