BERLIN (Reuters Health) - Although doctors have generally thought that tumors lack nerves, German researchers are building a body of evidence showing that nerves are in fact present in tumours, which could lead to a new understanding of cancer.

Dr. Peter Seifert of the University Eye Clinic in Bonn, Germany, first found nerve fibres in tumours of the eye while using a very high-powered microscope to examine the tumours.

"People were not looking for nerves in tumours," he said, adding that most researchers looking at tumors used microscopes that do not show nerve fibres. "This was the first time nerve fibres were found in tumours," he said. "But because the eye is such a complicated organ I decided to look for some kind of proof that the nerve fibres were solely concerned with the tumour, not the organ."

The proof he needed was eventually found in bladder tumours from five different patients.

"The tumours there grow into the bladder like a little tree," he said. "There could be no doubt that the nerve fibres I found there were only concerned with the tumours."

He has now found more evidence of innervation, in another kind of eye tumour called choroidal melanoma. This latest research has been accepted for publication in an American journal for May 2002.

Initial inspection suggested that the nerves in the tumours are involved in the body's autonomous nervous system--which regulates breathing, heart rate and many other fundamental systems that are controlled unconsciously--Seifert said.

"It is possible that this is connected to psychological factors, such as stress, being influential on tumours," Seifert said. "I personally would not rule out that this could be the reason. It could also be part of an explanation of spontaneous healing of tumours, and that some appear and then go away again."

The next step is to prove that the nerve fibres are carrying messages from the nervous system, he said.

"It now needs to be researched why the nerve fibres are there--what are they there to communicate? If you look at a tumour as a system that you have to fight, you can only do that when you understand it properly," Seifert said. "I hope this brings us one small step further in that direction."

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