When a 17-year-old girl Indian girl recently went to get a “lump” in her abdomen treated, it was found to be her twin growing inside her. This is a condition called foetus in foetu (FIF).
About:
Doctors say this is the first reported case of FIF in an adult woman worldwide, and the eighth such case in an adult in India (the previous cases were in adult men).
Foetus in foetu (FIF), or foetus within a foetus is a condition, in which a malformed parasitic foetus is usually found in the abdominal cavity of the living twin (host).
There are two theories about the origins of FIF.
The first is where a parasitic twin’s malformed foetus is formed inside the body of the host twin and both share the blood supply.
The other is that FIF is a “highly differentiated” form of teratoma – tumours made from tissues foreign to the area or part of the body in which they are found.
What differentiates a FIF from a tumour is that the lumps in the case of FIF are benign (do not spread to other organs and tissues) in nature, and are of embryological origin.
Fewer than 200 cases of this condition have been reported in medical literature and it occurs in about 1 in 5,00,000 live births. While FIF can occur in various age groups, it is most commonly diagnosed in patients younger than 18 months.
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