{"id":8995,"date":"2025-07-30T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/?p=8995"},"modified":"2025-08-03T02:54:43","modified_gmt":"2025-08-03T06:54:43","slug":"sleeping-cancer-cells-in-the-lungs-can-be-roused-by-covid-and-flu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/news\/sleeping-cancer-cells-in-the-lungs-can-be-roused-by-covid-and-flu\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Sleeping\u2019 cancer cells in the lungs can be roused by COVID and flu"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hidden in the lungs of some breast cancer survivors are tumour cells that can <a target=\"_blank\" lang=\"en\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-018-05445-x\">remain dormant<\/a> for decades \u2014 until they one day trigger a relapse. Now, experiments in mice show that these rogue cells can be roused from their slumber by common respiratory illnesses such as <a target=\"_blank\" lang=\"en\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-025-00128-w\">COVID-19<\/a> or the flu.<\/p>\n<p>The findings, published in <em>Nature<\/em> on 30 July<sup><a target=\"_blank\" lang=\"en\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-025-02420-1#ref-CR1\">1<\/a><\/sup>, seem to extend to humans too: data from thousands of people show that infection with the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is linked with a nearly twofold increase in cancer-related death, possibly helping to explain why cancer death rates increased early during the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>The results are \u201creally quite dramatic\u201d, says James DeGregori, a cancer biologist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, and an author of the study. \u201cRespiratory-virus infections didn\u2019t just awaken the cells,\u201d he says: they also caused them to proliferate, or multiply, \u201cto enormous numbers\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hidden in the lungs of some breast cancer survivors are tumour cells that can <a target=\"_blank\" lang=\"en\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-018-05445-x\">remain dormant<\/a> for decades \u2014 until they one day trigger a relapse. Now, experiments in mice show that these rogue cells can be roused from their slumber by common respiratory illnesses such as <a target=\"_blank\" lang=\"en\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-025-00128-w\">COVID-19<\/a> or the flu.<\/p>\n<p>The findings, published in <em>Nature<\/em> on 30 July<sup><a target=\"_blank\" lang=\"en\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-025-02420-1#ref-CR1\">1<\/a><\/sup>, seem to extend to humans too: data from thousands of people show that infection with the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is linked with a nearly twofold increase in cancer-related death, possibly helping to explain why cancer death rates increased early during the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/news\/sleeping-cancer-cells-in-the-lungs-can-be-roused-by-covid-and-flu\/\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">\u2018Sleeping\u2019 cancer cells in the lungs can be roused by COVID and flu<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[193,18,77,8,14],"class_list":["post-8995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-cancer","tag-covid-19","tag-influenza","tag-research","tag-sars-cov-2","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8995"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8996,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8995\/revisions\/8996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}