The Health Blog

HEPATITIS AND LIVER CANCER— THE LINK

Liver cancer, relatively rare in North American and Europe, is mankind’s most common tumor in the tropics. There, also, infectious hepatitis is much more common. Research reported in the Lancet (2:1394) suggests that Hepatitis-B virus (HBV), known to be responsible for many cases of infectious hepatitis, may also cause cancer of the liver.

Every virus has its characteristic sequence of nucleic acids in the chemical known as DNA. Like a fingerprint, HBV’s sequence is detectable in the blood and liver during acute infectious hepatitis but, after recovery, it usually disappears. It is only people whose tissues continue harboring HBV who, years later, develop cancer of the liver. Significantly, by the time they develop liver cancer, the HBV pattern has blended with their own DNA pattern, forming a hybrid, especially in the tissues of the tumor.

Consistent with these facts is the observation that liver cancer, although rare in animals, is the most frequent cause of death in woodchucks at the Philadelphia Zoo. The woodchuck is one of the few creatures, other than man, to be made ill by a virus with the nucleic acid sequence of HBV.

Since infection with HBV increases our liability to liver cancer about 20-fold, all victims of active hepatitis should be isolated and their contacts given immune globulin.

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