Understanding Teratoma and its Impact in Germ Cell Biology

9 months ago

Headache is one head pain that everyone has had at one point in time or the other, either as a result of stress, as a result of flu, a hangover from alcohol, or any other thing. It has been estimated that at least 1 in 20 adults has a common headache every day. While headaches can be caused by numerous common events, they can also be caused by teratoma in the body.

Teratoma is a form of germ cell cancer that affects about 10,000 people yearly, and it is a carcinoma that contains bones, teeth, or tissues of the brain. Teratoma is one of the cancers that more than one type of cell behaves abnormally as they are found in places where they shouldn't be. Unlike other cancer in the body which is as a result of a cell from that organ going rogue and multiplying beyond necessary, such as lung cancer where cells tha should line the lungs begins to over grow and multiply without dying, but are still tissues of the lungs. With teratomas, they are not tissues of the areas where they are, rather they can be of any other organ.

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Teratomas arise due to mistakes during the embryonic development of stem cells. When an egg cell is fertilized, it undergoes a transformation into an embryo, thanks to pluripotent stem cells. These remarkable stem cells are responsible for diverse cell type development, forming everything from brain cells to tissues and more during early stages of life. In adulthood, stem cells are limited in their ability to differentiate and can only produce specific cell types, like blood cells.

Primordial germ cells are responsible for making sperm cells as well as egg cells, they are very important in embryo formation, but when there is a problem with the stem cell during embryonic formation, it can be detrimental thereby leading to teratomas. These cancer can occur every where in the body but are majorly found in the ovaries, the testes, the tongue, the neck and brain.

This cancer is usually discovered during infancy after birth but there are cases where it can remain undetected for years until adulthood. Teratomas can involve weird tissues when they were underdeveloped and in some cases, they can contain brain tissues causing the person who suffers from the cancer even in the ovary to experience serious headache that could lead to numbness and possible seizure as a result of the body recognizing the teratoma which contains the brain tissue as foreign and so attack it causing inflammation. These antibodies then go to the brain itself and attack it since they both are the same tissue which is the cause of the headache and the seizures.

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Fortunately, teratomas can be removed, and the affected organs can be treated to restore the patient's health. However, if left untreated, they can prove to be life-threatening.

While Teratoma isn't a good thing that anyone would want to have a taste of as it can be life-threatening, teratoma assay has been of great importance to scientists on stem cell biology. In 2006 Shinya Yamanaka and Kazutoshi Takahashi were able to check if stem cells to skin cells were reversible and they started activating embryonic in skin cells to see if they can change the identity back to embryonic stem cells which was possible, and they called them induced pluripotent stem cells. These stem cells were transplanted into mice where they formed teratomas.

Understanding the connection between headaches and teratoma sheds light on the complexities of stem cell development and teratoma cancer research. Unraveling the mysteries of teratoma has helped scientists unlock new possibilities for advancing stem cell therapies and ultimately improving medical treatments for various conditions.

Hi, I am Tobi a writer, speaker, relationship blogger, and lover of good music. I love making friends and learning from people. Want to hear me speak on relationships and general life issues, you can find my youtube channel where you can listen and watch any episode for free, please do not forget to subscribe, friends. I sincerely appreciate every love I get from here, kindly do well to keep them coming.

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9 months ago

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