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Asked by celt105 to Clare, Mariana, Robert, Susanne on 21 Nov 2012.
Question: Are any types of cancer "caught" outside the womb?
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Robert Insall answered on 21 Nov 2012:
Hallo Celt.
Some cancers are caused by viruses (like the common cold, but not the common cold).
Most aren’t – they’re caused by accidents when something damages a gene.
All these are made after you’re born, so outside the womb.Only a few cancers happen inside the womb. Most interesting is teratoma – google it if you have time! Teratomas are really cool, and often not that damaging. One of my daughters had a haemangioma (a tumour made of small blood vessels). It suddenly died off when she was about 1.
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Susanne Muekusch answered on 21 Nov 2012:
Hi Celt,
Sometimes the reason for cancer is faulty genes you inherit from your parents- that is very rare. You have those faulty genes ever since- so from inside the womb.
When your genes are ok first and they get damaged later, it happens outside the womb.
And then there are those tumors Robert mentioned, for example teratoma. Nothing is wrong with the genes there- those are stem cells out of control! You can inject genetically normal embryonic stem cells into mice and the cells will form a tumor. That is quite interesting, because their genes are perfectly normal. It is just that they are not in their natural environment which controls their growth, and they keep growing and uncontrolled form all kinds of tissues.
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Clare Taylor answered on 21 Nov 2012:
It is really rare that a foetus in the womb gets cancer but there has been a case of a baby being born with leukaemia because the cancerous cells form the other crossed the placenta, however, this was thought to be an unusual case where there were two mutations in the cancerous cells.
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Mariana Campos answered on 21 Nov 2012:
Yes. There are cancers that are thought to be caused mainly by environmental causes. For instance: lung cancer is caused mainly by smoking, so it’s a “outside the womb” cancer.
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