What are the causes of liver cancer? To prevent liver cancer, beware of these causes

Liver cancer has the characteristics of insidious onset, long incubation period, high malignancy, rapid progression, strong invasiveness, easy metastasis, and poor prognosis. So what are the causes of liver cancer?

Parasitic diseases are one of the causes of liver cancer. Once upon a time, the incidence of parasitic diseases was regarded as one of the signs of a region's level of civilization and economic development, and was considered a "poverty disease". For example, the high infection rate of soil-borne parasites (such as roundworms) in backward areas was related to poor living and dietary hygiene.

The incidence of ascariasis has dropped significantly now, and ascariasis infection is rare in large cities. On the contrary, with the improvement of people's living standards, foodborne parasitic infections have increased sharply.

For example, the incidence of liver fluke infection is high in the Pearl River Delta region of Guangdong, ranking first in the country, and in some places the infection rate is as high as 60% to 70%. Infection is common among people who like to eat high-end delicacies such as sashimi and shrimp when going out, which seems to have become a "rich disease."

If people eat infected and undercooked meat, the metacercariae will further develop into adult liver flukes and enter the bile ducts of the human liver to parasitize and reproduce. If the bile ducts are blocked by a large number of parasites and eggs, it will cause acute cholangitis, which can occur in about a month.

However, most of the infected people are more terrible chronic infections - adult worms can survive in the human body for 20 to 30 years, and their activities, reproduction and metabolites cause chronic damage to the bile duct wall, bile duct epithelial hyperplasia, and worm eggs and worm bodies can also be used as cores to deposit with certain components in bile to form bile duct stones or gallbladder stones, and over time, chronic cholangitis or cholecystitis, and even liver fibrosis and liver cancer may occur. People who like to eat raw fish may not be in trouble even if they eat it repeatedly for more than ten years, but by the time they have symptoms, it may be too late.