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1 in 8 cancer cases worldwide are caused by infections, study finds

296 points · 158 comments · colinprince

hobo123 · 1790697245 · focus · HN ↗
Is it 100% clear cut that the infection causes the cancer, or can there be a common problem (like immune system degradation) that causes both the infection to develop (or develop easier) and the cancer the grow (which always involves failure of the immune system to kill it, if I'm not mistaken)?
Many viri are present in many human beings, but they don't develop cancer after all.
1. paimapi · 1790699363 · focus · HN ↗
  depends on the infection. COVID, for eg, is well-studied as something that chronically weakens the immune system and may cause autoimmune disorders
  <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7744845/" rel="nofollow">https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7744845/
  <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12185401/" rel="nofollow">https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12185401/
  so it's not surprising that infections can lead to downstream, systemic problems in the human body which then allows for things like cancer to arise (especially given that we just lived through a once-in-a-century pandemic that is still ongoing)
  1. tptacek · 1790701928 · focus · HN ↗
    Has there been a clear epidemiological signal post-COVID in elevations of any cancers? There are obviously stories about elevated rates of e.g. colon cancer in younger people, but those long predate COVID.
    paimapi · 1790708661 · focus · HN ↗
    not for COVID afaik but it seems like the mechanism is similar - systemic shocks to the body of some sort by viral loads leading to future pathologies
    tptacek · 1790709610 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm not asking if it's plausible, I'm asking if there's evidence it happened.
2. [deleted] · 1790706408 · focus · HN ↗
  [deleted]
3. abirch · 1790709874 · focus · HN ↗
  Pedantic but it's vira or viruses <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus#Etymology" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus#Etymology
  Viri is the latin plural for men
4. michael1999 · 1790778275 · focus · HN ↗
  In the extreme, you can observe direct transmission.
  <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_facial_tumour_disease" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_facial_tumour_disease

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