The association of family history of liver cancer with hepatocellular carcinoma: A case-control study in the United States☆
Section snippets
Background
Liver cancer is the sixth most common cancer and the third most common cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide [1]. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), which comprises most primary liver cancer cases, is rarely detected early and is usually fatal within a few months of diagnosis [2]. HCC has a high incidence rate in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, but a low incidence rate in the United States and Europe, with an age-standardized incidence rate of 5.3/100,000 in men and 1.9/100,000 in women
Study design
The study design was a hospital-based case-control in which cases and controls were prospectively evaluated. The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Written informed consent for an interview and for a biologic sample was obtained from each study participant.
Study population
A description of cases and controls was recently reported [15]. Briefly, case patients were prospectively recruited from gastrointestinal (GI) medical or surgical
Participants’ characteristics
Table 1 summarizes the demographic features of HCC patients and controls with and without HBV/HCV. There were 347 patients with HCC and 1075 healthy control subjects, with a patient: controls ratio of 1:3. A total of 157 (45.2%) HCC patients and 36 (3.3%) controls were positive for HCV and/or HBV markers. Most study subjects were non-Hispanic white males (HCC cases, 166 (47.8%); controls, 539 (50.1%). The mean age ± standard error (SE) was 61.8 ± 0.7 years for all HCC patients and 63.8 ± 0.9 for
Discussion
In this large case-control study, we evaluated whether the risk of HCC is related to a family history of liver cancer in the United States. We observed that 6.1% of the 347 patients with HCC reported having first degree family members with liver cancer compared with 0.8% of the 1075 healthy controls, yielding an approximately 4-fold increase in HCC risk. The significant association between positive family history of liver cancer and HCC development was observed in absence of HBV/HCV infection
Acknowledgments
Authors thank Dr. Lu-Yu Hwang at The University of Texas, School of Public Health in Houston, Texas for confirming the positive samples at her laboratory.
This study was supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH grants) RO3 ES11481 (to M.H.), CA106458 (to M.H.), Texas Tobacco Settlement (to M.H.).
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NIH funded study (RO3 ES11481 and CA106458). The authors declare that they do not have anything to disclose regarding funding from industries or conflict of interest with respect to this manuscript.