Recently, unsettling images depicting an exceedingly rare type of tumor found within a woman’s ovary have resurfaced on the internet.
Over two decades ago, a 25-year-old Japanese woman, who was a virgin, required surgery to excise a growth identified in her reproductive system. Upon opening her up, the medical team was taken aback by their findings.
This case spurred researchers to conduct a study, which was documented in the National Library of Medicine in 2004 following the discovery of the ovarian tumor.
Initially, it was classified as a mature teratoma. According to the authors of the study, these are ‘commonly observed benign ovarian tumors, consisting of ectodermal, mesodermal, and endodermal components that are generally disorganized’.
However, this particular case ‘demonstrated considerable differentiation’.
The images of the tumor are quite unsettling, featuring a ‘doll-like’ form with limbs, teeth, and even hair.
The study’s abstract noted: “A solid mass within the tumor was found to have a head, trunk, and extremities.”
Eventually, the tumor was identified as a ‘mature fetiform teratoma (homunculus)’. As described by the Cleveland Clinic, this is ‘a type of dermoid cyst that consists of living tissue and often resembles a malformed fetus’.
The study detailed: “Brain, eye, spinal nerve, ear, teeth, thyroid gland, bone, bone marrow, gut, trachea, blood vessels, and phallic cavernous tissue were confirmed microscopically.”
The researchers also highlighted its ‘distinctive features’, which were the ‘clear anterior-posterior, ventral-dorsal, and left-right axes, with a spatially well-organized arrangement of the organs’.
Alarmingly, an eye was positioned at the front of its head, and it developed both a spinal nerve and spinal bones. Additionally, ‘the thyroid gland was anterior to the trachea, and the gut was deep inside the trunk’, the study’s authors mentioned.
The researchers proposed an intriguing theory: ‘that the information necessary for the organization of the body plan may be conserved and transmitted, even with parthenogenesis’, which is a form of asexual reproduction.
They further suggested: “Mature cystic teratomas of the ovary are mostly benign and do not always attract detailed attention.
“However, precise analyses of such tumors may significantly enhance our understanding of both parthenogenetic and normal human development.”
The study was conducted by Naohiko Kuno, Kenji Kadomatsu, Makoto Nakamura, Takahiko Miwa-Fukuchi, Norio Hirabayashi, and Takao Ishizuka.
In another instance last decade, a teratoma tumor was found in the ovaries of a 16-year-old Japanese girl during an appendectomy.