How is bile duct cancer caused

How is bile duct cancer caused? The appearance of bile duct cancer is a devastating injury to patients. The disease has a low cure rate, poor prognosis and rapid development. However, as long as everyone actively treats it, there is still great hope with the continuous development of medicine. Let's take a look at how bile duct cancer is caused.

1. History of biliary surgery: Cholangiocarcinoma may occur many years after surgery and may occur in bile ducts that do not contain stones. It is mainly caused by chronic biliary infection leading to epithelial anaplasia, often after biliary drainage surgery.

2. Radioactive thorium dioxide: Among patients with a history of contact with thorium, the onset age of cholangiocarcinoma is 10 years earlier than those with no history of thorium contact. The average incubation period is 35 years (after exposure to thorium), and it mostly occurs at the distal end of the intrahepatic bile duct tree.

3. Malignant transformation of sclerosing cholangitis: Patients with primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) have a higher chance of developing bile duct cancer than the general population. PSC is also related to ulcerative colitis.

4. Hepatitis B virus infection: Some domestic bile duct cancer patients are also infected with hepatitis B virus. Whether there is a connection between the two remains to be further clarified.

5. K-ras gene mutation: Molecular biological studies in recent years have shown that the mutation rate of codon 12 of the K-ras gene in cholangiocarcinoma is as high as 77.4%, indicating that the K-ras gene mutation may play a relatively important role in the occurrence of cholangiocarcinoma.

In addition, it may be related to pancreatic juice reflux, bile stasis, stone formation, malignant transformation of benign bile duct tumors, and tumor-like differentiation of liver stem cells. All of these can cause chronic inflammatory stimulation of the bile duct mucosa, thereby inducing bile duct cancer. Therefore, we should always check our bodies regularly in our daily lives to detect bile duct cancer early.