Will my father's liver cancer be inherited?

Modern medicine believes that 90% of the causes of cancer are external, and heredity plays a very small role in the causes of tumors. Except for colon cancer evolved from multiple intestinal obstruction and skin cancer evolved from xeroderma pigmentosum, other cancers are considered to have no clear relationship with heredity. For families where several people suffer from liver cancer at the same time or successively, it may be due to common living conditions, such as common exposure to certain carcinogens, which is much more important than heredity.

In other words, this cannot be called hereditary, it can only be considered a family clustering tendency. Members of a family that has had a liver cancer patient may need to be alert to the disease.

Why does liver cancer have a tendency to cluster in families? Currently, most scholars believe that:

1. Vertical transmission of hepatitis B virus. Mothers who are infected with hepatitis B virus and become long-term virus carriers can transmit the virus to their newborns during or after delivery. Because the newborns' immune function is not yet fully developed, they cannot effectively eliminate the virus, resulting in persistent infection, leading to chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis, and eventually liver cancer.

2. Horizontal transmission of hepatitis B virus. Family members of hepatitis patients have very close contact. If one of them is infected with hepatitis B virus, it is easy to spread the virus to others without knowing it.

3. The eating habits and lifestyles of family members are basically the same, and everyone’s chances of being exposed to carcinogenic factors are basically the same.

Liver cancer is not hereditary, but why do multiple people in a family often suffer from liver cancer?

The medical community has proposed a "two-hit theory" for this. Its basic view is that any cancer is the result of two mutations in the cell's genes. For patients with sporadic non-familial cancer, these two changes occurred after birth. For cancer patients with a family tendency, they have been attacked by carcinogenic factors before their mothers became pregnant. When they are born, the cells in their bodies have already had a change that is prone to cancer. After birth, as long as they are hit by a carcinogenic factor once, they may develop cancer, so the chance of developing cancer is higher than that of ordinary people. This is the famous "two-hit theory."

Therefore, in families with liver cancer patients, other family members do not need to worry too much about the hereditary nature of liver cancer, let alone affect their children's marriage. However, they should pay attention to the following points:

1. Strengthen the prevention of hepatitis, including paying attention to personal hygiene: avoid hepatitis from the mouth; promote hepatitis B vaccination, especially for newborns born to hepatitis B virus carriers.

2. Pay attention to food hygiene. Do not eat moldy food, improve water sources, do not drink alcohol, do not smoke, etc.