Eggs of the dwarf tapeworm (Hymenolepsi nana).
Photo Credit: Carolina Biological/Visuals Unlimited/Corbis
A report published on November 4th in the New England Journal of Medicine described a bizarre case where a tapworm that infected a Colombian man deposited malignant cells inside his body that spread much like an aggressive cancer. This 41 year old patient had a long compromised immune system due to HIV. After being infected by dwarf tapeworm (Hymenolepis nana), small tumour-like malignant cell growths were found in his lungs and lymph nodes. These odd-shaped cells appeared to be invading nearby healthy tissue, yet tested negative for human proteins. DNA was confirmed to belong to a tapeworm. And genome sequencing showed that the tapeworm cells carried particular mutations that, in human cells, are associated with tumours.
“We have a situation where a foreign organism is developing as a tumour rather than developing as an organism,” says Peter Olson, a developmental parasitologist at the Natural History Museum in London. Olson believes that the tumorous tapeworm cells are rogue larvae that burrowed from the stomach into the lymph nodes of immuno-compromised people (a healthy immune system would stop this invasion). The larvae are loaded with regenerative stem cells, so instead of turning into an adult tapeworm, they proliferate. “Those stem cells that would normally give rise to a segmented worm don’t, because they’re in the wrong place and have the wrong environmental cues,” says Olson.
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