Ruminations: COVID Posing as a Cancer Cure? No...Really!

"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. 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. Given how common cancer is, and how common COVID-19 is, it may not be surprising that we see more reports of spontaneous remission associated with a coronavirus."

"Proving cause and effect will be very difficult unless we see quite a few such remissions."
Paul Hunter, professor of medicine, University of East Anglia, Norwich, England

Doctors concluded that the Covid-19 had destroyed his cancer by firing up his immune system (Image: Commonwealth Media Services)

"At this stage it’s too early to draw any conclusions from these cases - it’s quite possibly a coincidence."
"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."
Martin Ledwick, Cancer Research UK’s head cancer information nurse

"We think COVID-19 triggered an anti-tumour immune response", Sarah Challoner, a physician at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Britain stated. This, of a 61-year-old man in the U.K. whose peculiar experience has health professionals uncertain whether to credit his simultaneous bout with the SARS-CoV-2 virus at a time he was newly diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma, revealed during a medical checkup that occurred the summer of 2020. Almost directly following his cancer diagnosis, the man was infected with COVID-19.

He was rushed to hospital severely ill with COVID. What followed was close to two weeks of intensive care. He was put on oxygen because of the damage to his lungs. Then he was discharged after fully recovering. A few weeks afterward he returned to hospital for a CT scan and it was discovered that the tumours that had been seen to be present on his torso had almost all disappeared. Spontaneous emission does occur, but rarely. One of the team of doctors who treated the man stated her belief that the virus had affected his immune system dramatically, leading to the malignant cells' destruction.

For privacy protection the man has not been identified, but the case was published in the British Journal of Haematology.

Dr.Challoner is convinced that the COVID infection in all likelihood promoted wide-scale production of T-cells performing the function of destroying both the presence of the virus and the cancer. Her opinion is not universally shared, however, and others urge caution in making the assumption that the two are that entwined; that COVID spurred the immune system to action in such a way as to rescue the man from his newly-diagnosed cancerous condition.

Hodgkin lymphoma is caused when the body's white blood cells increase rapidly, spreading to the lymph nodes. Symptoms may vary, but the most obvious symptoms of this type of cancer include swollen nodes in the neck, underarm, groin or chest. Chemotherapy is the preferred method of treatment, to which the disease responds well, according to Dr.Paul Hunter who also stated: "I don't think we fully understand the mechanisms, but some immune response is most likely to be the reason."