Is lung cancer contagious before death?

Coughing in late-stage lung cancer is usually caused by stimulation from cancerous tissue and is not contagious. However, some cancer patients are susceptible to pneumonia due to low immunity and the use of anti-tumor drugs. If you are not in good health, you may also be infected with pneumonia. Pneumonia is very different from SARS. SARS is a special pneumonia caused by coronavirus. Generally, people with low immunity are prone to bacterial pneumonia. If you are a healthy person with strong resistance to those bacteria, you may not develop pneumonia. It may just be a cold, tonsillitis, etc.

The so-called infection refers to the transmission of bacteria and viruses through certain channels. For example, the transmission of tuberculosis is that the tuberculosis bacillus enters the body through the respiratory tract and is transmitted through the air; hepatitis and AIDS are caused by hepatitis viruses and AIDS viruses through blood transfusion or contact. The causes of lung cancer are mostly physical, chemical and environmental factors, that is, the formation of lung cancer does not have the basic conditions for infection. Therefore, lung cancer is not contagious, and late-stage lung cancer is not contagious. At present, many scholars advocate the theory of viral carcinogenesis, and it has been confirmed that Epstein-Barr virus can cause Burkitt lymphoma, and is closely related to nasopharyngeal carcinoma, which is highly prevalent in southern China and North Africa. There are also a large number of reports on the relationship between hepatitis B virus and primary liver cancer, and human papillomavirus and cervical cancer, which have laid a theoretical foundation for the theory of viral carcinogenesis. However, there are no reports of certain bacteria or viruses infecting the human body and causing lung cancer at home and abroad.

So far, cancer is generally not contagious. In simple terms, contagion means that a disease is transmitted from one person to another through some means. Contagion must meet three conditions: the source of infection, the route of transmission, and the susceptible population. Clinical data prove that cancer patients themselves are not the source of infection.

In the past, everyone believed that "lung disease" was contagious, and this "lung disease" was tuberculosis. Patients with tuberculosis are called open tuberculosis when their sputum is positive for bacteria, which is contagious. Therefore, patients with cough, sputum, and blood in their sputum should pay attention to disease prevention. Tuberculosis is a disease transmitted through the respiratory tract, while lung cancer is different from tuberculosis. Lung cancer is a malignant tumor that loses its normal cell morphology and dynamics due to the abnormal proliferation of local cells under the action of various different carcinogenic factors. Cancer cells discharged through sputum rapidly degenerate and necrotize due to the evaporation of sputum water and other reasons. Even fresh sputum requires various nutrients and specific conditions to make cancer cells grow and reproduce in vitro. Scientists often have to go through a lot of hardships to succeed in cultivating a living cancer cell, so cancer is not contagious.