Is liver cancer contagious? To prevent liver cancer, you must know these common knowledge about the disease

Is liver cancer contagious? Actually, there is no need to worry. Liver cancer is not contagious, but hepatitis B is contagious. If a liver cancer patient is a hepatitis B patient, then his hepatitis B may be transmitted to others, but liver cancer is only caused by mutations in his own cells and will not be transmitted to others. But it should be noted that hepatitis B may develop into liver cancer.

People over 40 years old with a history of hepatitis for more than 5 years or positive hepatitis B virus antigen markers, people with a history of alcoholism for more than 5 to 8 years and clinical manifestations of chronic liver disease, and patients with confirmed liver cirrhosis are at high risk of liver cancer. We should remind everyone that the occurrence of liver cancer is closely related to infectious diseases such as hepatitis B and hepatitis C. Therefore, strengthening the prevention and treatment of various types of hepatitis will undoubtedly play an effective role in curbing the occurrence of liver cancer.

Friends who belong to these two groups should have their serum alpha-fetoprotein (AFp) tested every six months; when AFp is found to be elevated but below 200 micrograms/liter, frequent rechecks and dynamic observations should be performed until the disease is ruled out or diagnosed. If the patient's AFp continues to rise, B-ultrasound and CT tests cannot support the diagnosis, and further hepatic artery angiography should be performed. The B-ultrasound that everyone is very familiar with can make up for the errors of the AFP test. It is best for patients to check B-ultrasound and AFP simultaneously. Experts say that AFP testing is an ideal and simple method for screening small liver cancer, and B-ultrasound examination is an important imaging diagnostic method for detecting small liver cancer.

There is no doubt that liver cancer is contagious, but as we all know, liver cancer is called the "king of cancers", so early detection is very important. Especially for small liver cancer, early detection can save a life. So what is small liver cancer? Small liver cancer refers to liver cancer with a maximum diameter of a single cancer nodule of no more than 3 cm or a sum of the diameters of two cancer nodules of no more than 3 cm.

Studies have shown that hepatitis virus infection has a synergistic carcinogenic effect with aflatoxin, drinking water pollution, alcoholism, smoking, nitrosamines, oral contraceptives, trace element imbalance, genetics and other factors. Liver cancer cells not only occur in the liver, but also metastasize to other parts and form new tumors. Due to the combined influence of the above factors, liver cells in the human body may lose normal regulation and grow excessively and infinitely, eventually forming a tumor in the liver that can invade and destroy normal tissues and organs. This is liver cancer.

At present, it has been noticed that patients with liver cancer often have a history of acute hepatitis, chronic hepatitis, and cirrhosis. From a pathological perspective, about 50-80% of patients with primary hepatocellular carcinoma have cirrhosis, and 18.2-50% of patients with primary liver cancer, bile duct epithelial cell carcinoma, have cirrhosis. This figure shows the close relationship between the two diseases, and liver cancer may be the result of excessive regeneration of liver cells caused by cirrhosis.

In addition, through the determination of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) in liver cancer patients, it was found that the positive rate of HBsAg in liver cancer patients was as high as 81.82%. This result seems to indicate that they had suffered from hepatitis B before, but the relationship between the two needs further study. But one thing is certain, preventing viral hepatitis and cirrhosis is very important to reduce the occurrence of liver cancer.