COVID-19’s Surprising Effect on Cancer

The Norwegian Encore arrived in Southampton, UK.  The end of 35 days on the ship, which started in Seattle, went through the Panama Canal, then via Miami, all the way to England.  I will tomorrow provide a summary of our cruise.

COVID-19 hasn't quite disappeared.  

• There were 45,737 new cases last week, with Russia #1 and the USA #2.  There were 363 deaths.
• However, an average of 389,000 die in the world from the flu each year.  That's 7481 deaths/week, 20 times higher than COVID-19 last week.
• Further, coronary heart disease kills 9 million.year.  Or 173,000 deaths/week.
• So COVID deaths are now very minimal.

So while this pandemic was declared over a year and a half ago, it is still of some interest to peer into some of the more newsworthy aspects of this illness.  For example, can a vaccine similar to that used for COVID-19 cure cancer?  For sure, people with pre-conditions who caught COVID-19 had a higher morbidity than normal patients.  Cancer is a pre-condition that seriously threatens the health of patients infected with COVID.  A study released a year ago provides a lot details on what happens.

However, as early as April of 2023, another research team noted:

The immune response to COVID-19, may be implicated in both tumor regression, and progression. Specifically, we discuss potential mechanisms which include oncolytic and priming hypotheses, that may have contributed to the cancer regression in these cases and could be useful for future options in cancer treatment.

In other words, those with cancer who contracted COVID showed somewhat mixed results, with a few rare cases of cancer reduction.

Today, I will use a Time magazine article to provide better news.  Apparently, some cancer patients who were infected with COVID-19, saw tumors shrink or grow more slowly.  Those who were seriously ill from the pandemic virus showed heightened improvement. 

A research team led by Ankit Bharat of Northwestern, published their findings in the Journal of Clinical Investigation:

Using a combination of human cells and animal models, Bharat and his team found that in the presence of SARS-CoV-2, immune cells called monocytes act differently than they normally do. Typically, monocytes, as part of the immune system, cruise the bloodstream and alert other immune cells to the presence of foreign cells or pathogens; some monocytes can attract cancer-killing immune cells to tumors, but others aren't as effective in doing so. That's because in some cases, cancer cells can co-opt monocytes —“like a demon summoning forces,” says Bharat—and form an immune wall protecting the tumor from being discovered and attacked by additional immune defenses.

But during a COVID-19 infection, SARS-CoV-2 attaches itself to these monocytes, and by doing so reverts them back to doing their original job: defending the body against cancer. “They look the same, and are still recruited to the tumor sites, but instead of protecting the cancer cells, they start to bring specific natural killer cells—which are the body’s main cells that kill cancer—to these tumor sites,” says Bharat. “So where before the cancer was brainwashing the monocytes into protecting the cancer, the virus now helps them to attack cancer.”

Animal tests showed 60% to 70% tumor reduction with human cancers of the breast, colon, lung and melanoma.  People undergoing lung and spleen transplants also experienced this phenomenon.

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