Patient Outcomes from Alcohol-Related Liver Cancer are the Worst

Alcohol-related liver cancer patients are more likely to cause death when compared Normal liver cancer, finds a new study.

Patients with alcohol-related liver cancer do not live as long as patients with liver cancer that is not associated with alcohol consumption, a new study suggests.

The findings suggest that patients with alcohol-related liver cancer have a reduced overall survival time mainly due to worse liver function and tumor characteristics at diagnosis.

Hepatitis C Virus Screening Rates Low Despite Increase in Liver Cancer Rates
Hepatitis C virus screening rates remain low in the United States despite the steady increase of liver cancer incidence.

‘Efforts should be made to improve early liver cancer screening and alcohol abuse management to prevent people from being too late. ’

Liver cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, with hepatitis B and C infections being the main causes.

"To improve the prognosis of liver cancer in the alcoholic population, efforts should be made to implement effective screening programmes for both cirrhosis and liver cancer, and to improve access to alcoholism treatment services," said co-author Charlotte Costentin from the Hôpital Henri-Mondor in France.

To compare aspects of alcohol-related and non-alcohol-related liver cancer for the study, published in the journal Cancer, researchers examined 894 patients with newly diagnosed liver cancer who were followed for five years. As many as 582 patients had a history of chronic alcohol abuse, and 312 did not.

New Way to Kill Liver Cancer
Silencing a key cellular enzyme and treating cells with a diabetes drug, a successful strategy for cancer therapy.

They also recorded whether patients with alcohol-related liver cancer were abstinent or not at the time of cancer diagnosis.

A total of 601 patients had died by the time of the investigator's final analyses.

Blocking A Protein That Stimulates Fat Synthesis May Help Treat Liver Cancer
The accumulation of fatty acids and lipids in the liver is one of the major causes of hepatocellular carcinoma or liver cancer.

Alcohol-related liver cancers were more likely to be diffuse and were detected in patients with worse liver function. Median overall survival was 9.7 versus 5.7 months in the non-alcohol-related and alcohol-related groups respectively.

When researchers looked at each stage of cancer individually, however, survival was similar in patients with non-alcohol related and alcohol-related cancer.

Scientists Discover How to Switch Liver Cancer Cell Growth
The liver cancer cell line is an important cell line for the pharmaceutical industry for testing anti-cancer drugs.

The findings indicate that efforts should be made to improve both screenings for early signs of liver cancer and the management of alcohol abuse, the researcher said.

Source-IANS