A Colombian man, who was infected with a tapeworm, developed cancerous cells from the parasite and died, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
CDC scientists identified the man to be a 41-year-old HIV patient from Colombia. The man reportedly caught the attention of Pontifical Bolivarian University researchers in Medellin after going to the hospital reporting of fever, coughs, fatigue and weight loss, according to The Washington Post.
Apparently, the Colombian man had HIV for at least seven years without any treatment. After a CT scan, they learned he had 0.4 to 4.4- centimetre tumors in his the neck, lymph nodes, lungs and liver. The tapeworms were found in the man's stool samples.
Doctors asked the CDC for help after learning that the tapeworms' cells acted like cancer cells in respect to their destructiveness. Unfortunately, it was too late since it took three years for the CDC researchers to conclude that the tapeworms were the reason for the cancer cells. Three days after this conclusion, the patient died, according to Healthline.
The Colombian man's official cause of death was reported as HIV/AIDS, with cancer being one of the reasons to his debilitation.
The CDC researchers released their findings on the Colombian man's cancerous tapeworms in the New England Journal of Medicine Wednesday.
According to the scientists, the Colombian man could have ingested the microscopic tapeworm eggs from contaminated food, and since the man's immune system had been compromised with HIV, the tapeworms quickly multiplied.
It remains unclear whether the tapeworms already had cancer-like cells even prior to the man ingesting them, or whether the cancer cells were developed inside his body.
According to CDC pathologist Atis Muehlenbachs, he and his team were unsure what to make of the cells when they saw them in 2013. While the cells' growth were cancer-like, they also fused together, which is reportedly unlike human cells.
Muehlenbachs said they found DNA snippets of the Hymenolepis nana, a dwarf tapeworm, as verified by a researcher and tapeworm expert at London's Natural History Museum.
Muehlenbachs said it remains unsure whether there was available treatment for the Colombian man, given his rapidly increasing tumors. Chemotherapy wasn't an option too since it only works for normal human cancer cells.
In any case, Muehlenbachs refers to the case as "an infection with parasite-derived cancer which causes a cancer-like illness." He added that there needs to be further investigation on the case to determine whether the tumors developed from cancer or an "underlying biological phenomena."