What seemed to be a pregnancy was actually something much more dangerous

The supposed pregnancy of a woman turned out to be something much more foreign. In a recent report by her doctors, they detail how women had developed an incredibly rare form of ovary cancer which imitated the symptoms of pregnancy, even causing a positive pregnancy test.

Doctors in India described the case of an erroneous identity earlier in July in oncoscience newspaper. After having suspected the woman first had an extra-uterine pregnancy, the doctors discovered a large and rare type of tumor in her right ovary. Fortunately, cancer was deleted before spreading elsewhere, and the woman seems to have responded to the treatment.

A pregnancy that was not

According to the report, the 36 -year -old woman visited the doctors three months to have intermittent access to heavy menstrual bleeding. It was tested positive for pregnancy during a urine test, and when the doctors carried out a physical exam, they felt a solid mass along its abdomen compatible with a 20 -week fetus. An initial ultrasound seemed to show that the woman underwent an extra-uterine pregnancy, a condition where the embryo forms outside the uterus, generally in the fallow tube (the extra-uterine pregnancies are intrinsically non-viable). After having done more extensive imaging, they found that she really had cancer in her right ovary, probably a choriocarcinoma.

Choriocarcinomas are tumors mainly formed from cells that become the placenta during pregnancy. It is particularly dangerous cancer because tumors tend to grow quickly and to spread to other parts of the body. Women’s doctors quickly carried out surgery to assess the progression of her cancer and treat her if possible.

They managed to remove the tumor, with the woman’s uterus, the ovaries and the surrounding lymph nodes. Although relatively large, the tumor was still at an early stage of development and had not metastasized. However, when the doctors looked at more closely, they found that his cancer was even stranger than we thought.

“Extremely rare”

Choriocarcinomas are generally gestational, which means that they are linked to pregnancy; Often, the tumor will even result from an abnormal and not viable pregnancy. But women’s cancer was a non -gastational ovarian choriocarcinoma (NGOC), which represents only 0.6% of all tumors of ovarian germ cells (a germ cell being the real egg). In addition, cancer was a pure Ngoc, an “extremely rare” subtype made entirely from germ cells and not other types of tissues.

An image of the woman’s tumor, as well as her uterus and a benign ovarian cyst, can be seen here, but being warned, it is not for the weakness of the heart.

Although these cancers are not linked to pregnancy, they make the body produce high levels of human hormone -human chorionic gonadotrophin (HCG). Women also produce high levels of HCG during pregnancy, and some tests detect pregnancy by measuring HCG, explaining the positive result of the woman.

“Ngoc is a rare, distinct and very aggressive tumor which mainly affects young women of reproductive age,” wrote the authors.

Fortunately, in this case, cancer seems to have been captured early in time. After surgery, the woman was placed in chemotherapy. And its most recent tests have shown that its HCG level had returned to normal, indicating a complete processing response, according to doctors. She will have to undergo regular monitoring tests, including CT imaging, to ensure that cancer does not stage an unwanted return.