The liver is a very important organ in the human body. It is involved in several vital processes, keeping the body clean, acting as if it were a battery, whose function is to break down food that enters the body to convert it into energy, regulating chemicals and hormones, fighting infections.
However, the health of the liver can be compromised in different ways: viruses, genetic alterations, excessive fat accumulation or alcohol abuse.
Threats to the liver also include hepatocellular carcinoma, known as primary liver cancer, which is the third leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide.
Causes of hepatocellular carcinoma or liver cancer and relation to hepatitis
As a general rule, until a disease that seriously affects the liver, such as liver cancer, appears, complications go unnoticed. This is mainly because it is not until the liver is damaged by 75% or more that liver function declines. Hepatitis or inflammation of the liver caused by an infection is the main cause of up to 80% of primary liver cancers, namely Hepatitis B or Hepatitis C.
Initially, Hepatitis C virus (HCV) and Hepatitis B virus (HBV) cause inflammation in the liver. Liver cells become damaged and scar tissue forms, which progressively deteriorates liver function.
Other risk factors include excessive consumption of alcoholic beverages, exposure to aflatoxins (toxins produced by a fungus that grows in nuts, seeds and legumes), iron storage diseases, obesity, diabetes and cirrhosis.
Today, it can be said that in Spain there are about 400,000 people affected by Hepatitis C, but about half of them are undiagnosed. As such, Hepatitis C is an asymptomatic disease at the beginning, but decades after infection, once it has become chronic, it ends up developing into cirrhosis or hepatocellular carcinoma in one out of three cases. Thus, in up to 85% of cases the disease will become chronic, as the carrier viruses are not eliminated from the body.
The prognosis of liver cancer is not very favorable, since it is usually detected in advanced stages of the disease when it is difficult to cure.
Prevention of hepatitis to avoid liver cancer
The best way to prevent HBV is vaccination, although immunization is only effective in individuals who have never been exposed to the virus. However, at present there is still no vaccine against HCV, so the best way to avoid it is to avoid tobacco and alcohol abuse, exercise regularly, and maintain a healthy diet.
Groups at risk of contracting the Hepatitis C virus
- Health care workers who may get accidental needlesticks
- People who have received blood transfusions in the 1990s
- People with tattoos or piercings done in unregulated places
- Persons who have injected or are injecting drugs
- Homosexual men
- Born to HCV-affected mothers
- Persons undergoing chronic hemodialysis
- Prison inmates
- Sexual partners of HCV-infected persons
- Infected with HIV or HBV
Treatments for Hepatitis B and C help in their cure.
The detection of hepatitis is essential, not only because of its possible serious consequences, such as liver cancer, but also because it helps. New antiviral drugs manage to offer cure rates close to 100%, being very well tolerated treatments and of a short duration, between eight and twelve weeks.
With the treatment advised by the Digestive System specialist, the progression of liver inflammation or fibrosis is avoided, preventing or delaying the chances of suffering liver cancer or cirrhosis, eliminating the risk of transmitting the virus to other people.