Similarities vs. key discrepancy between tuberculosis and cancer

TL;DR

This paper compares tuberculosis and cancer, revealing similarities in organ response patterns and suggesting shared vulnerabilities in immune protection, which could inform future research and treatment strategies.

Contribution

It introduces a comparative analysis of TB and cancer responses across organs using spectrometric data, highlighting parallel development patterns and immune system vulnerabilities.

Findings

Organ response patterns to TB and cancer are similar across multiple organs.

Both diseases show peak mortality at similar ages, e.g., brain tumors around age 10.

Shared immune vulnerabilities may exist across different diseases and organs.

Abstract

In 2015 in the United States 612,000 persons died from cancer whereas only 470 died from tuberculosis (TB), a disease which was the main cause of death around 1900. How can one explain such a key discrepancy in treatment progress? A statistical comparison between TB and cancer will give some clues. However, TB and cancer also share several important features. Both TB and cancer can affect several organs, e.g. lungs, brain, bones, intestines, skin. What in cancer is called malignant neoplasm (tumor) is called granuloma in TB. By isolating malignant cells (versus bacteria) from the rest of the body, such clusters protect the host's organism but at the same time they are "secure beachheads" from where malignant cells (versus infected macrophages) can wander off to new locations. Thus, metastatic tumors have a TB parallel in the form of secondary granulomas. In order to investigate more closely this parallel we use the age-specific response of organs. Called spectrometric analysis in a previous paper (Berrut et al. 2017), this method provides information about how fast tumors develop and how serious they become. A convenient characterization of the response to TB of organ j is given by the following (age-dependent) death ratio: Tj(t)=(death by TB of type j)/(all TB deaths) The development of cancer tumors can be described by a similar function Cj(t). We compare the organs' responses in all cases for which specific death data are available. It appears that for the same organ Tj(t) is similar in shape to Cj(t). For instance, with regard to brain tumors, both TB and cancer mortality peak around the age of 10. Such observations may bring to light vulnerabilities in the way the immune system provides protection to various organs.