What are liver cancer causes and risk factors?
Hepatitis B infection Hepatitis B can be caught from contaminated blood products or used needles or sexual contact but is frequent among Asian children from contamination at birth or even biting among children at play. The role of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection in causing liver cancer is well established. Several lines of evidence point to this strong association. As noted earlier, the frequency of liver cancer relates to (correlates with) the frequency of chronic hepatitis B virus infection. In addition, the patients with hepatitis B virus who are at greatest risk for liver cancer are men with hepatitis B virus cirrhosis (scarring of the liver) and a family history of liver cancer. Perhaps the most convincing evidence, however, comes from a prospective (looking forward in time) study done in the 1970s in Taiwan involving male government employees over the age of 40. In this study, the investigators found that the risk of developing liver cancer was 200 times higher among employees
