When cancer cells die, how does it feel?

[gdpawel]

Have you got that right Andrea!

Even if some malignant cells may settle onto a new site, their replicative success is hardly guaranteed. Most appear to either die or lapse into dormancy. Patients may harbor thousands or millions of these dormant micrometastases without suffering a fatal relapse of the disease.

According to the NCI, chemotherapy has been found to reduce the activity of the immune system's natural killer cells by 96%. So if there are tumors growing elsewhere in the body and if the immune system helps to control tumor growth, then chemotherapy could make things worse by allowing more rapid growth of the other tumors.

It is our immune system that fights against viruses, infections, cancer, etc. Chemotherapy is notorious for seriously compromising the patient's immune system by killing the cells that mediate immunity. When that immune system is suppressed or compromised, that's when disease sets in (like cancer).

The body's immune system attacks and eliminates not only bacteria and other foreign substances but also cancer cells. Cancer cells are not foreign to the body but their biological function has been altered in that it doesn't respond to the body's normal mechanisms for controlling cell growth and reproduction (uncontrolled cell growth and reproduction is what causes cancerous tumors).

Much of the body's protection against cancer is carried out directly by cells of the immune system rather than by antibodies circulating in the bloodstream.