The 43 -year -old actress died Sunday March 16, 2025.
Belgian actress Emilie Dequenne died at 43 on Sunday March 16, 2025 at the Gustave Roussy hospital in Villejuif in Val-de-Marne from her cancer, AFP announced her relatives. It was in August 2023 that the diagnosis had fallen less than two years ago. “I was in filming, I had a stomach ache and I was very tired. (…) A bizarre blood test, a scanner to pass, a scanner mass, a huge mass on the adrenale” she says in the program seven to eight in December 2024. The doctor announces cancer to him “Severe, hyper rare, extremely recurrent”. After a series of treatments including chemotherapy, his cancer had reoffended at the end of 2024.
Corticosurrenaloma is cancer little known to the general public in view of its rarity, “About 1 to 2 people a year worldwide over a million “ Share the actress. It develops at one or two adrenal glands present above the kidneys. These glands participate in the secretion of hormones such as glucocorticoids, hormones that act on blood sugar; The mineralocorticoids represented by aldosterone which balances the amount of sodium and potassium in the body; and androgens, hormones of the development of male sexual characteristics. In the vast majority of patients, corticosurrenaloma reaches a person without any cause or factor favoring being identified.
“I know that I would not live as long as expected”
Among the symptoms of corticosurrenaloma, a significant and even predominant android obesity on the abdomen, hypertension, a drop in muscle mass, an increase in hair, masculinization in women and sometimes also the desire to drink a lot of water because of the drop in potassium. The severity of the disease depends, as for all cancers, on the stage of evolution at the time of diagnosis. At stage 1 and 2, cancer is located in the adrenal, it is operable and the chances of healing are high. In stadium 3 and 4, there is regional invasion or even distance metastases.
If the tumor recurrences or there are non -operable remote metastases, doctors can prescribe mitotane (lysodren®). “We have very little use of cytotoxic chemotherapy in these tumors. It is reserved for very aggressive failures or forms because it works less well than in other cancers” explained Professor Jérôme Bertherat, head of the Cochin Hospital Service in a previous article.
Émilie Dequenne knew that her prognosis for life was reserved. “I know that I would not live as long as expected” She confided a few months ago. “If we get a complete excision, life expectancy at 5 years is more than 80%, Professor Bertherat informed us. On the other hand, in metastatic stages, life expectancy does not exceed 30% at 5 years. “
