Nasopharyngeal carcinoma, Hodgkins lymphoma, Burkits lymphoma cause EBV...

[Linksey]

My Dad passed years ago at age 49 from nasopharyngeal carcinoma, it is caused from the EBV along with the other two cancers listed, some central nervous system lymphomas that are associated with HIV. Having CFS I hear a lot about EBV and now HIV so I thought I would ask if anyone else has had any of these cancers in their family. NC is very rare in the US so how did my Dad get it is the same question we all ask about CFS. The only sign he had was hearing loss. Then the doctor that sent him to the grave just put ear plugs in his ears instead of checking him out and that spread the cancer. As all cancers it was a terrible death.

I will also add my late husband died at age 36 from colon cancer. I wonder if it is connected to xmrv or EBV. My thoughts are the ones that are infected get CFS or cancer. My son, age 17, has already had three polops removed that would have been cancer. I come from what use to be a healthy family!

Would like to see a chart...
CFS family cancers and their age.
Any thoughts?

~Lisa
I hope I did this thread right, I'm new and have never done this. :innocent1:

 

[August59]

You did it just fine. Very sorry about the passing of these men in your life. Having someone near and dear passing from cancer is very hard. I hope you experience recovery from CFS soon. I hope we all do.

Feeling better soon,
August59

 

[Linksey]

Thank you August59!

 

[camas]

Linksey,

I'm so sorry to hear that you lost your father and husband to cancer at such young ages. It's tough. My husband was 49 when he died of Burkitt's. There is an older thread on lymphoma here that you might find interesting.

 

[In Vitro Infidelium]

My Dad passed years ago at age 49 from nasopharyngeal carcinoma, it is caused from the EBV along with the other two cancers listed, some central nervous system lymphomas that are associated with HIV. Having CFS I hear a lot about EBV and now HIV so I thought I would ask if anyone else has had any of these cancers in their family. NC is very rare in the US so how did my Dad get it is the same question we all ask about CFS.

The role of EBV in cancer is not understood, so it's not usually said that EBV is a 'cause', and the term most frequently used is 'associated'. In Hodgkin's Lymphoma only one in three cases have an EBV association. In a type of non Hodgekin's lymphoma only found in African populations there is a near 100% association with EBV.

It is always tempting to seek explantions for horrible events by looking for patterns, the problem is that patterns of illness look very different on the large scale than they do when looked at close up. Although it may seem strange that several rare cancers affect one family, statistically this kind of the thing will happen without any single cause being common to those cancers. To undertand what is going on we have to look at thousands or millions of people/families and find out what differences and commonalities there are between them. Cancer certainly has a genetic element so some families will show higher rates than others, but because the triggers for cancer vary, the types of cancer that affect relatives will depend on all sorts of variables.

Hyde, Leveille, Vaudrey and Green state that "Thyroid malignancy in ME/CFS patients greatly exceeds the normal incidence of thyroid malignancy in any known subgroup." but don't appear to have any source for claiming that. Apart from Hyde et al, there seem to be no published data on links between M.E/CFS and cancer and it would need large scale epidemiology (involving thousands of people) to come up with any meaningful correlations.

There are two big problems when looking at the relationship between cancer and M.E/CFS - first is that diagnosis of CFS would not usually be given if someone was already diagnosed with cancer, second is that lifestyle is known to have a huge impact upon the development of cancer and it is conceivable that the lifestyle forced on people with M.E/CFS would influence whether or not they developed cancer. Adapted diet, reduced exercise, changed bodyweight, psychological well being (yes, yes I know but it has an effect) all have roles in susceptibility to cancer. None of this means that there isn't a relationship between M.E/CFS and cancer, but if it exists it is almost certainly a very complicated relationship.

IVI