Two babies ‘caught’ cancer from mother during childbirth

Two children in Japan have “caught” cancer from their mother, in a rare medical phenomenon, with new cases.

They probably inhaled cancer cells from their mothers, each of which unwittingly had cervical cancer.

The children each developed lung cancer years later.

A baby has to pass through the mother’s cervix during childbirth, and doctors believe cancer cells find their way into the amniotic fluid surrounding the infant, who then inhales the cells as they open their mouth to take their first breath and cry.

It’s extremely rare – only 20 cases have been documented – and the children went undiagnosed for almost two and 10 years after their respective births, scientists reported in a New ENgland Journal of Medicine case study, published this month.

Scientists estimate that about one in 500,000 mothers with cancer pass the disease on to her baby during childbirth.

And only one in 1,000 mothers gets cancer during pregnancy in the first place.

Cancer of the cervix is ​​the fourth most common cancer in women, affecting an estimated 570,000 women per year and killing 311,000 worldwide.

And women are diagnosed at the average age of 50, with most cases occurring between 35 and 44.

Doctors advise women to start screening at age 25, through physical exams and pap smears, but because cancer is not common during the most fertile years of a woman’s life, it may be that it is not a priority for those trying to conceive.

And nearly half of all pregnancies – around 45% – are still unplanned.

Women are therefore often not screened during a prenatal examination before becoming pregnant.

Without it, cancer is difficult to detect.

Also, even if a woman becomes pregnant while having cancer or is diagnosed with cancer during pregnancy, it is very rare for cancer to affect her developing baby.

But there are, of course, exceptions – as was the case with the two children described in the case report.

There is no way to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that cancer was passed from mothers to babies, but there were telltale signs.

On the one hand, the location of the mothers’ cancers facilitated their transmission.

The cervix is ​​located at the bottom of the uterus and at the top of the vaginal opening.

A baby develops in the womb, surrounded by amniotic fluid, which is like a liquid insulator to protect the baby and provide the mother with water, nutrients, and other chemicals.

When in the womb, a baby does not breathe like adults. Instead, it absorbs oxygen through the umbilical cord and placenta.

So even if tumor cells from the cervix are found in the amniotic fluid, there is not much chance that they will be passed on to the baby.

But when the baby passes through the birth canal, there is a brief window of opportunity to inhale the amniotic fluid near the cervix, allowing tumor cells to enter the lungs.

The first child was diagnosed with lung cancer about 23 months after birth when he developed a persistent cough.

After several cycles of chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and surgery to remove a lobe from one of his lungs, the child finally went into remission and was cancer free a year later.

Sadly, her mother’s cancer spread throughout her body and she eventually passed away.

But before that, scientists sequenced genes in mother and child tumors and saw a clear link between them, suggesting the cancer was likely passed from mother to baby.

The mother of the second child died when he was only two years old.

He showed no signs of illness for four years, but at the age of six he developed chest pain and was also diagnosed with lung cancer.

Genomic sequencing showed that her tumor was also linked to that of the mother and that the tumor was positive for HPV, the STI which is a common cause of cervical cancer – but not lung tumors.

Taken together, this evidence suggests that he likely “caught” cancer from his mother.

The boy had to have one of his lungs removed, but he was alive and cancer-free 15 months later.