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> Three months later they found no remnants of the cancer, making him the first known naked mole rat cancer survivor. Did it magically cure itself? Does that e

• throw_away_777 10y ago
  The body is fairly good at fighting off illnesses and disease. Not a doctor, but from what I have read often by the time someone is diagnosed with cancer it has progressed to a stage where the body's immune system has failed to fight it off, so it is probably rare for cancer to go away on its own. Here is one article suggesting that cancer can go away on its own: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/12/18/some-cancers-may-just-go-away.aspx http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/12/1...
  • sandworm101 10y ago
    >> so it is probably rare for cancer to go away on its own. It is actually very common. It has happened to you many times without you knowing it. Cancerous cells can appear and be taken care of immediately by various natural mechanisms. There are mechanisms to correct errors in DNA before a cell divides, or a damaged cells can self-destruct. This happens all the time as skin cells deal with DNA damaged by UV light. And there are diseases that cause cancer not directly but because of breakdowns in these repair mechanisms (see DNA repair-deficiency disorder). If you looked at every cell in your body no doubt a great many are technically cancerous at any one time. A clinical case starts when the natural mechanisms fail and damaged cells divide enough to cause the disease we call cancer. The distinction is medically important because if you go looking for every tiny little bit of cancer you will find a great many that would never give rise to a clinical case, that would never impact the patient.
    • nonbel 10y ago
      Have you looked into what combination of mutation rates and number of required mutations would be necessary for your model to work? Usually people say it is something like 10^-8 per bp per division and you need to collect 3-6 mutations to get cancer.
      • sandworm101 10y ago
        Isn't cancer predicated on mutations that result in uncontrolled cell growth? I imagine there are a great many mutations that result in cell death or an inability to properly divide. Those mutations wouldn't contribute to cancer risk. So maybe you need 3-6 but only amongst those bits of DNA that actually matter.
        • nonbel 10y ago
          Yes, that is correct. It would only be some "special" combinations of mutations, not just any set.
  • npunt 10y ago
    Just FYI, Mercola is really not a good source to link to for anything. For instance, he thinks mobile phone radiation causes cancer and peddles anti-vax messages. Can't comment on the specifics of that article, but wikipedia does point out: > Phyllis Entis, a microbiologist and food safety expert, highlighted Mercola.com as an example of websites "likely to mislead consumers by offering one-sided, incomplete, inaccurate, or misleading information." Some more sources: [1] https://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/mercola.html https://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/mercola.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Mercola https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Mercola [3] https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/9-reasons-to-completely-ignore-joseph-mercola-and-natural-news/ https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/9-reasons-to-completely-ign... [4] http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/February-2012/Dr-Joseph-Mercola-Visionary-or-Quack/ http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/February-2012/Dr-... [5] http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/four-biggest-quacks-plaguing-america-their-bad-claims-about-science http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/four-biggest-quacks-...
• maxander 10y ago
  Spontaneous remissions have been observed, and aren't really well understood, as far as I know. In this case, though, they had removed the "dark red and purple mass" of the original tumor, and the rat was a "survivor" since no overlooked bits of tumor or metastases turned up afterwards. For all that oncology is a deep and sophisticated branch of medicine, "just take it out" is still sometimes a good strategy.
• dekhn 10y ago
  Yes, there are many cases where the body's immune system can completely cure a modest cancer infection. I believe the common term used by doctors is "the tumor magically melted away". However, if the immune system leaves just 2-3 tumor cells left that are not targeted, they can grow back into a full tumor.
  • Pica_soO 10y ago
    Also, the whole affair can result in heavy auto-immune diseases, as the targeted cells descend from healthy organ cell types.
    • ionwake 10y ago
      Can you explain pls?
      • krageon 10y ago
        When the immune system learns to destroy cells, it also remembers the markers for bad cells. If you have (for example) cancerous liver cells and your immune system learns to destroy these, the potential exists for it to learn markers that are also present on normal liver cells. After your cancer is gone, this memory that partially (or entirely) applies to regular cells will lead to your immune system trying to destroy normal, healthy cells.
        • ionwake 10y ago
          Thank you for your reply. Has this ever been theorised as a cause for athritis?
• deleted 10y ago
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