Cancer is a terrible diagnosis all by itself. But now, scientists have now discovered a new form of cancer, and the scary part is, it’s contagious.
This is the second transmissible cancer that has been found recently. This time the discovery was made in Tasmanian devils, the small dog-sized carnivores found in the Australian island state of Tasmania.
Transmissible cancer is one in which the disease can be spread between individuals by the transfer of living cells. Until now, they have been thought to be extremely rare.
One of the few known contagious cancers has been causing facial tumors in Tasmanian devils and, because of its contagious nature, may actually threaten the species with extinction, according to the Business Standard.
Tasmanian devils are marsupials found only in the wild in Tasmania. They are ferocious and frequently bite each other during mating and feeding interactions. This is how researchers from the University of Tasmania and the University of Cambridge believe the disease has been transmitted.
The cancer spreads rapidly throughout the animal’s body and usually causes death of the affected animals within only months of the first appearance of symptoms.
Another transmissible form of the disease was first observed in Tasmanian devils in 1996 and has since spread through most of Tasmania, leading to a widespread decline in population of the animal.
Two other forms of transmissible cancer have been found, one that affects dogs and one that affects soft-shell clams.
Cancer normally is not able to survive beyond the body of the host from whose cells they originally derived. Yet this new cancer can, scientists have discovered.
“Until now, we’ve always thought that transmissible cancers arise extremely rarely in nature,” Elizabeth Murchison from the University of Cambridge commented.
However this new facial tumor cancer has been detected in eight devils in the southeast of Tasmania, leading Murchison to add, “this new discovery makes us question this belief.”
This is extremely frightening, as it opens up the possibility that these types of cancers could be found or spread to humans.
Please share this story and let us know what you think about this new discovery.