The cause of gastric cancer is not unique

Gastric cancer is the most common type of malignant tumor. There are many causes of gastric cancer. Many patients do not discover the disease and control it in time because they do not understand the causes of gastric cancer . Let us now understand the causes of gastric cancer.

Normal gastric mucosal epithelial cells are derived from the continuous division, growth and differentiation of primitive newborn cells (stem cells). When they grow and when they die is controlled by the body, and they will not grow wildly and out of control. Stem cells have various proto-oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes. In most cases, the characteristics of proto-oncogenes are not expressed, and carcinogens are not formed, so they cannot develop into gastric cancer cells.

People with a family history of gastric cancer may be more likely to express proto-oncogenes, which is the reason why gastric cancer is caused by heredity. In addition to the internal factors that cause gastric cancer, such as heredity, there are many external factors that cause gastric cancer, such as the various non-genetic factors faced by the above-mentioned high-risk groups, which can also directly induce or long-term damage to the gastric mucosal barrier, making it easier for cancer-promoting substances to induce stem cell oncogene expression or gene mutation to produce carcinogens, so that the newly immature primitive cells cannot differentiate into gastric mucosal epithelial cells with normal functions, but become various abnormal cells with poor differentiation and uncontrolled growth.

If the body's immune surveillance function is normal, it can often eliminate a small amount of abnormal cells. However, when long-term poor mental state causes endocrine system abnormalities and long-term low immune function, or abnormal cells escape the body's immune surveillance for some unknown reason, the abnormal cells will eventually develop into gastric cancer cells whose growth the body cannot control, completing the carcinogenesis process.

The canceration process is very long and may take decades. It is usually a slow process of chronic superficial gastritis → atrophic gastritis → intestinal metaplasia → dysplasia (atypical hyperplasia) → gastric cancer. Once cancer cells are formed and can resist the body's immune monitoring, they will explode and grow into gastric cancer lesions visible to the naked eye. Depending on the patient's age and growth and metabolic rate, this process may take half a year to several years.

As local cancer foci continue to grow, they occupy the space of normal gastric cells, causing the normal function of the stomach to weaken, and they may even directly grow invasively to adjacent tissues and organs and continue to grow. The lymph and blood that continuously flow through the cancer foci will carry cancer cells to lymph nodes in various parts of the body (and eventually flow into the blood) or tissues and organs throughout the body, causing widespread metastasis of cancer cells. After the local cancer foci grow wildly and break through the gastric serosa, they scatter into the abdominal cavity and implant in various parts of the abdominal cavity. As cancer cells in various parts of the body grow wildly and uncontrollably, they constantly rob normal cells of their nutrients, eventually causing normal tissues and organs to fail due to extreme malnutrition, leading to the death of gastric cancer patients.

The above information is the causes of gastric cancer introduced to you by experts. Generally speaking, it is still helpful to you. I hope you can spend more time to look at these causes of gastric cancer. After we understand the causes of gastric cancer, we must also detect the existence of the disease in time, and then treat it to control the spread of the disease.