Mesothelioma is known to metastasize to organs and adjacent tissues, like other forms of cancer. However it is extremely rare to encounter a case of mesothelioma impacting the nervous system.
Patterns of Mesothelioma Migration
Mesothelioma is an aggressive, fast moving form of cancer once it gets going. It develops either in the chest (pleural and pericardial mesothelioma) or in the abdomen (peritoneal mesothelioma). The disease will move into adjacent tissues and ultimately into adjacent organs when metastasizing. Mesothelioma will migrate early to lymph nodes much like other forms of cancer. Pleural mesothelioma will move into the lung before it metastasizes into other organs, simply because the lung is immediately adjacent and is the source of the asbestos fibers that cause pleural mesothelioma.
Pleural mesothelioma always starts on one side of the body or the other. In fact it is most likely that pleural mesothelioma will migrate from the outer lung lining to the visceral pleura on the chest wall, to the lung and to nearby nodes on that one side of the body before migrating to the other side of the chest cavity. Often pleural effusion will develop on the affected side of the body but not in the pleura on the other side.
In any case, for both pleural and peritoneal mesothelioma the organs most likely to be affected by metastasizing mesothelioma are the liver, the lymph nodes, the diaphragm and in the case of peritoneal mesothelioma, the kidneys. Peritoneal mesothelioma is also likely to infest the colon with malignant cells. This variant of the disease is adjacent to the entire digestive system and can impact any component of it, although the colon seems to be the most common target.
Mesothelioma in the Brain, a Rarity
There are hundreds of etiological studies of mesothelioma and its patterns of migration, and all of them seem to agree that the central nervous system is rarely affected. Mesothelioma in the brain, the bones or the adrenal glands is an extremely rare occurrence. There have been occasions when a mesothelioma patient has developed a malignant brain tumor and the cells in that tumor were similar to the cancer cells found in malignant mesothelioma. Those occasions have been sufficiently rare, however, that they have been the subject of articles in medical journals.
One report from a German medical center dating from 1983 reported a malignant fibrous mesothelioma tumor in a seventy year old man that had spread to regional lymph nodes, the diaphragm, the chest wall, adrenal glands and brain. Fibrous mesothelioma tumors are a different type of cancer than asbestos caused mesothelioma however, and in fact this case showed no evidence of asbestos bodies.
Malignant fibrous mesothelioma tumors are a rarity among rarities: usually they are benign. Uniformly, however, they are not associated with either smoking or asbestos. Once the malignant cells develop, pleural mesothelioma will destroy a respiratory system and surrounding tissue relatively quickly. Peritoneal mesothelioma will do the same in the abdomen. There is little likelihood that either will impact the brain, even in the late stages of the disease when distant metastasis has set in, sending malignant cells to locations far from the origin of the disease.
Sources:
- Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma: Clinical Recommendations for Diagnosis, Annals of Oncology, 2009, http://annonc.oxfordjournals.org/content/20/suppl_4/iv73.full
- Peritoneal Mesothelioma: A Review, PubMed, National Institutes of Health, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1994863/
- Leptomeningeal Metastasis from Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma, American Journal of Neuroradiology, August 2004, http://www.ajnr.org/cgi/reprint/25/7/1223
- Brain Metasteses in Malignant Fibrous Mesothelioma, PubMed, National Institutes of Health, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6613538
