For many expectant mothers, welcoming the birth of new life is both happy and exciting.
Data show that about one in every 1,000 expectant mothers will be diagnosed with cancer during pregnancy.
So, will the fetus developing in the uterus of the mother suffering from cancer be affected by the mother’s cancer?
Mother and daughter suffer misfortune together,
Before announcing the answer, let’s look at a true story.
One day in 2007, a 28-year-old Japanese mother welcomed the birth of her daughter. The born baby brought great joy to the whole family and everything was so beautiful.
However, unforeseen circumstances, 36 days after delivery, the new mother appeared uncontrollable vaginal bleeding and high fever symptoms. After being sent to a doctor for treatment, she was quickly diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Although she received timely treatment, but due to the critical condition, she finally died unfortunately.
Then, 11 months later, the disease extended its claws to the daughter who had just entered the world.
The family found a strange lump growing at the junction of her lower jaw and cheek, as well as symptoms of pleural effusion.
Doctors at Tokyo Medical and Dental University accepted the little patient who was still babbling. At first, doctors initially suspected sarcoma based on the location of the lesion, but biopsy results denied this judgment.
After further exploration, it was found that the children also suffered from leukemia.
Did the transfer take place in how?
This result is both regrettable and suspicious: is it a coincidence or is leukemia metastasizing between mother and daughter?
Japanese doctors who wanted to find out what was going on turned to Professor Mel Greaves, an authoritative expert in this field and a cell biologist at the British Cancer Institute, for help and received his readiness to agree.
What happened afterwards was like a detective story.
Greaves found signs of leukemia cells in blood samples taken at the child’s birth. This discovery strongly suggests that [the place of the crime] may be in the uterus.
In other words, cancer cells already exist in children when they are still in the fetal stage.
This discovery is further close to the answer, but it still cannot rule out the possibility of [coincidence], let alone explain whether the mother and daughter suffered from leukemia first from the mother or the daughter.
In other words, is the direction of disease transfer from mother to daughter, or is it just the opposite?
To answer this question, it is necessary to thoroughly investigate the genetic background of leukemia cells of both mother and daughter, and [gene sequencing] is the best way.
Previous pathological examination found that the mother’s acute lymphoblastic leukemia had an abnormal karyotype of [Philadelphia chromosome positive]. This is due to the interactive translocation of the long arm of chromosome 22 and chromosome 9 in human body, resulting in the generation of [BCR-ABL fusion gene]. The [fusion gene] is exactly the subject of sequencing by Greaves team.
Sequencing results showed that the leukemia cells of mother and daughter not only had the same karyotype, but also the translocation sequence of the fusion gene was consistent with each other.
In addition, the researchers also found that the genetic material in the daughter’s leukemia cells came entirely from the mother and had nothing to do with the father.
This means that the disease is indeed transmitted from the mother to the daughter in the womb.
But this is irrational, isn’t it?
The journey to find the answer seems to have come to light, but what is still wrong?
Yes, the placenta is a powerful barrier between mother and infant.
Although occasionally the mother’s cells break into the fetus through the placenta, under normal circumstances, the fish that slip through the net will be removed by the fetus’s immune system.
However, in this case, the immune system, which was supposed to be a solid wall, opened its doors, turned a blind eye to the leukemia cells transferred to the body and let them sit up. Why?
For this reason, Greaves continued his exploration and finally revealed the mystery.
We know that abnormalities in gene structure and function have created various manifestations of cancer cells.
Scientists found that a large piece of chromosome 6 short arm was missing from leukemia cells that affected both mothers and daughters. Here, the [major histocompatibility complex] (MHC) family, whose main function is to encode cell [surface antigen], happens to be distributed.
With the markers of these antigens, the immune system can clearly distinguish whether a cell is a foreign body or its own tissue.
This is also the reason why the mother’s cancer cells sneaked into her daughter’s body and were not recognized by the immune system, but eventually wreaked havoc into the disease.
Do mothers suffering from cancer need to worry about this?
Seeing this, the reader may have the answer to the question at the beginning of this article: babies born to women with cancer do have the possibility of cancer. However, there is no need to worry too much about it.
First of all, not all cancers can be transferred to babies through mothers.
Only those cancer cells that metastasize very rapidly-melanoma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and leukemia-have this possibility.
Secondly, this kind of situation is extremely rare.
Since such cases were first reported in 1886, only more than 10 cases have been recorded for more than 100 years, including 6 cases of melanoma, 8 cases of lymphoma and leukemia.
Third, the placenta of most mothers works normally.
Due to the strong filtering effect of the placenta, the vast majority of substances that hinder the healthy development of the fetus will be shut out.
Fourth, the vast majority of mothers’ MHC gene families are normal.
The example of losing MHC gene family is also rare, so a few fish that slip through the net cannot escape the [long arm of the law] of the immune system.
Finally, although the Japanese baby mentioned above lost her mother, the doctor’s treatment for her was very successful and she is still alive.
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