Alcohol's Relationship with Cancer

Cancer kills more Americans each year than anything except heart disease. It is estimated that over 526 thousand Americans will die from cancer this year, and anywhere from 2 to 4 percent of these cases can be directly or indirectly attributable to excessive alcohol usage.

The strongest connection between alcoholism and cancer is seen with cancers of the mouth, pharynx and esophagus. Breast, colorectal and liver cancers also show some relationship to excessive alcohol usage, but these are still in some dispute. Together, according to the American Cancer Society, these cancers are the cause of over 125 thousand deaths in the United States each year.

People who drink excessive amounts of alcohol over long periods of time, usually alcoholics, stand a far greater risk of developing cancer than the general population. For example, 75% of American cancers of the esophagus are linked to alcoholism. Nearly 50% of mouth, pharynx and larynx cancers can be attributed to excessive drinking. When these cancer/alcoholism sufferers also smoke cigarettes, the increase in risk factor is dramatic.

Liver cancer is indirectly related to drinking. Drinking to excess, especially to the level of alcoholism, will very often cause cirrhosis or scarring of the liver. This, in turn, leads to liver cancer. Liver cancer is relatively rare in the United States; about .002% will ever contract the disease. However, alcoholics will comprise about 36% of all liver cancer cases.

Why?

Studies show that alcohol produces a substance called acetaldehyde in the body. This substance interferes with a cell's innate ability to repair its own DNA. This makes it more likely that a mutation like a cancer can occur.

Another possible explanation being studied is that alcohol may be interfering with the enzymes that normally help remove toxins from the body. If they can't do so normally, these toxins can be more potent as carcinogens as they pass through the body.

Alcohol can also assist other carcinogens, making itself a co-carcinogen. For example, someone who both smokes and drinks is at a 35 times greater risk for esophageal cancer than one who neither smokes nor drinks.

Chronic alcoholism almost always results in malnutrition. This is because it interferes with the way the body absorbs nutrients in our food. Some of these nutrients seem to promote some types of cancer when not present in sufficient enough quantities. Iron, zinc, vitamins E and B are such nutrients. Vitamin A, which is proffered by some as a cancer preventative, is also reduced in heavy drinkers' livers and esophagus's.

When diagnosed with colon cancer, a person is often put on a diet high in folic acid. However, as little as two drinks per day can completely eliminate any benefit brought by the added fruit in the diet.

Alcoholism has long been known to negatively affect the immune system. Alcoholics are more prone to infectious diseases and cancer. To keep your chances of contracting cancer to a minimum, be sure to drink no more than two alcoholic drinks three times per week or less.

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Alcoholism

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Chemotherapy Drugs For Liver Cancer

Liver cancer can called as a metastatic cancer because in almost all cases, the cancer actually development from original cancer which has been spread to other area. But it can be specified as stage four colon cancers that cannot be recognized due to the lack of symptoms.

Your doctor may recommend to chemotherapy which is the best treatment for all cancer including liver cancer. You need to consider the best chemotherapy drugs in order to get recover from this disease faster.

Avastin is known as the best chemotherapy drugs for liver cancer. Even it is expensive, avastin can possibly extend your chances of survival by shrinking tumors for later removal.

Avastin is generally used in chemotherapy for colon cancer which shows up in the liver. The doctor may give a combination for liver cancer chemotherapy along with avastin such as Doxorubicin (Adriamycin), Cisplatin, Methotrexate, 5FU (fluorouracil), and Gemcitabine in variant doses.

Chemotherapy may give before or after surgery depending on patient's condition. But your doctor may prefer chemotherapy then surgery to remove the shrunken tumors. This happen because liver cancer usually occur when patients already have cancer in other part of body like colon cancer.

If the size of tumor is small, patient have options to do surgery first. But this condition happens in small number of cancer cases since many people have tumors in the liver that are too large for liver resection.

All chemotherapy treatment gives various side effects. But the most common chemotherapy side effects for liver cancer are lost of appetite which can be serious problem that could decrease chances of survival. But this condition can eliminate by used some drugs like marinol to increase appetite and decrease nausea.

However, the chances of survival and better quality of living are much higher than just five years ago with the great advances in cancer treatment.

Get more information about chemotherapy for cancer in chemotherapy side effects.

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Fundamental Facts of Liver Cancer

Tumors of the liver can be classified as primary or metastatic. Moreover, primary tumors can be benign or malignant. These benign tumors are quite rare, but have been reported with increasing frequency in women taking oral contraceptives for long periods. Most benign tumors have no symptoms and may regress when the oral contraceptives are discontinued. Liver cancer is more common than benign tumors and you must have the knowledge about this in order to know what you can do to prevent it or manage and treat it.

The predisposing risk factors of liver cancer which led to its development are chronic liver disease from hepatitis, alcoholic and post necrotic cirrhosis, long term androgenic therapy, long term use of oral contraceptive and exposure to inorganic arsenic, vinyl chloride, and various pesticides which are harmful to the liver. These risk factors are somehow linked to the development of liver cancer.

Primary liver tumors may originate in the liver cells, bile ducts, or both. The lesions may be singular, nodular or diffuse, and may involve only a lobe or the entire liver. The malignant cells compress the surrounding normal liver cells and may spread by invading the branches of the portal vein, causing the liver to be enlarged and misshapen. Hemorrhage and necrosis are common. Direct extension of the tumor to the gallbladder, mesentery, peritoneum and diaphragm is also possible too. Primary liver tumors commonly metastasize to the lung and also metastasize to the portal lymph nodes, adrenal glands, spleen, kidney, ovaries and pancreas.

Liver cancer symptoms may be absent, minimal, or severe depending on the tumor size and the hepatocellular damage. It can be manifested by weight loss and hepatomegaly with pain or tenderness in the right upper quadrant. Other common findings include a mass in the liver, blood tinged ascites and cachexia. Jaundice is uncommon until the terminal stage of the disease.

Prevention of liver cancer is directed at those factors that have been identified as predisposing individuals to risk. The potential for controlling this type of carcinoma through prevention of chronic liver disease from cirrhosis and hepatitis is excellent and deserves special attention. Immunization against hepatitis B virus is an effective method of prevention and should be used at a personal and community level as indicated.

Long term survival of patients with malignancies of the liver is dismal. Treatment is supportive and similar to that of patients with cirrhosis. Surgical resection is considered when there is no cirrhosis, the lesion is located in a surgically accessible area and is not multicentric and there is no spread to adjacent organs.

Other treatment modalities have been used but are only palliative. Intra-arterial infusion of chemotherapeutic agents to deliver high concentration of drugs to the tumor with fewer side effects than systemic chemotherapy can be opted. Hepatic artery embolization which reduces the blood flow to the tumor has only a short term effect due to the rapid development of collateral blood flow. Radiation therapy is also used to reduce the size of the tumor.

These are the basic facts that you need to consider when it comes to cancer of the liver. Knowledge about this kind of condition helps you think what actions that you must do in order to take care of the liver and prevent cancer.

There are specific risk factors of liver cancer that are linked to its development. These factors can be prevented if you know the basic about cancer of the liver. Find out more at http://cancerliver.org/blog/.

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Liver Cancer - Related to Hepatitis B Carrier State?

Liver cancer refers to either primary liver cancer, that is cancer originating from the liver cells or supporting cells in the liver, or secondary liver cancer, that is cancer that has spread to the liver from the surrounding organs, usually via the blood that drains those organs and flow through the liver. In this article we shall confine ourselves to primary liver cancer, also referred to as hepatocellular carcinoma.

Liver cancer is one of the more commonly occurring cancers in the world, being the fifth most common cancer in men and the eighth most common cancer in women. The total number of new cases diagnosed is estimated to be about 500,000 every year. Men seem to be twice as likely as women to get liver cancer.

What could cause this problem?

The incidence of liver cancer seems to be higher in certain countries. Studies appear to indicate a positive relationship between the incidence of liver cancer and that of hepatitis B virus carrier states as well as hepatitis C virus infections. The risk of a hepatitis B carrier developing liver cancer is about 60 times higher than that of a non hepatitis B carrier. This risk appears to be even higher than the risk of a smoker developing lung cancer (about 20 to 25 times).

What countries have a higher incidence of hepatitis B carrier states? It is observed that certain countries seem to have a much higher incidence of hepatitis B carriers. One case in point is Taiwan, where it is noted that an abnormally high 20% of pregnant mothers were discovered to be carriers of hepatitis B. This compares significantly to the incidence of 1% in the United States. Similar studies show a higher incidence of hepatitis B carrier rates in South-East Asian countries, between 10% to 15%. This has led to the postulation that Oriental persons are genetically less able to overcome the hepatitis B virus. This observation is supported by another observation, that the conversion rates to immunisation with hepatitis B vaccine is lower in Chinese as compared with other races.

Studies also show that the incidence of new cases of primary liver cancer has decreased significantly in those countries where there has been a deliberate effort to immunise persons to hepatitis B with hepatitis B vaccine. This is one of the rare situations where there is a demonstrable cause/effect relationship, and where there is definite proof that a particular cancer can be prevented, by both vaccination and by screening of blood and blood products for hepatitis B and C viruses.

Other risk factors or suspected causes of liver cancer need to be mentioned here. They are:

Liver Cirrhosis. A situation of scarring of the liver due to chronic damage as a result commonly of heavy drinking. There is a slight increase of risk of liver cancer developing.

Inherited causes. Persons with hemochromatosis, a genetic problem of excess iron deposits in the body have a higher chance of developing liver cancer.

Aflatoxin. A mold found in bad peanuts and grain is a well known culprit in the formation of liver cancer.

Need to more about liver cancer? Follow this link http://thedocrecommends.com/livercancer for more details. Tony Wong is a medical practitioner.

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Are You At Risk Of Developing Liver Cancer?

Liver cancer is somewhat unusual because it is generally the result of metastasis, as opposed to native cancerous cells. This means that when someone gets liver cancer, it was the result of cancerous cells from another part of the body, say, the colorectal system, spreading from there into the liver. Whether they began there or migrated there, liver cancer cells grow in the form of tumors, sometimes reaching large sizes.

The liver itself is quite large, one of the largest organs. Located in between the diaphragm and stomach, it is a vital organ that provides numerous functions for the human body. It stores glycogen, synthesizes proteins, and, perhaps most famously, detoxifies the bloodstream. It also has many other roles to play like being a main cog in the digestive system.

With all of its functions tied to key systems in the body, it is no wonder that when cancer strikes, the symptoms are more often than not of the specific type. Two of the most common are jaundice and abdominal pains, but unexpected loss of weight and fever may occur also. Actually, the set of symptoms one experiences is mostly determined by the exact diagnosis from the doctor.

There are four main types of liver cancer that are seen most often: heptocellular carcinoma, cholangiocarcinoma, hepatoblastoma, angiosarcoma. Each of these subtypes will effect a different type of cell in the organ. Heptocellular carcinoma is found the most often while angiosarcoma is the more rare yet deadly, because of its aggressive nature.

So what causes liver cancer? It is not completely certain but there are definite risk factors that can put you at a greater chance of developing liver cancer at some point in your lifetime. One of these factors is hepatitis infection. These viruses attack the liver and prolonged exposure can lead to cancer. Another risk factor is diabetes. It has been shown that people with diabetes are much more likely to develop tumors in their liver than people without diabetes.

The risk factor that will probably surprise no one is alcohol consumption. We know that the liver detoxifies the blood, and that includes removing alcohol. Too much alcohol consumption (along with other factors) can lead to cirrhosis of the liver, a state which not only permanently impairs your liver's ability to function but also makes it much more susceptible to cancer.

The best way to avoid it is to maintain a healthy lifestyle and watch out for the risk factors listed above. If you notice any of the symptoms arising you may want to see a doctor. They can conduct various non-invasive tests such as blood work or imaging, and if they feel it necessary, a biopsy may be performed. After a biopsy, further tests may be conducted in order to determine the exact state of the cancer so that treatment can be tailored to do the most good.

There are a number of different treatments available. The situation will mostly depend on factors such as the age and health of the patient, and of course, how far along the disease is.

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