Is bile duct cancer a genetic disease?

The bile duct is one of the important organs of the human body. With the continuous advancement of medical technology, more and more people are diagnosed with bile duct diseases. Among these bile duct diseases, the most serious one is bile duct cancer. How does bile duct cancer come about? Is it hereditary? This is also a question that many bile duct cancer patients want to know. Let's find out whether bile duct cancer is a genetic disease.

With the development of bile duct cancer, people are paying more and more attention to this disease. Biliary duct cancer refers to a malignant tumor disease of the extrahepatic bile duct that occurs from the confluence of the left and right hepatic ducts to the lower end of the common bile duct. Biliary duct cancer can be divided into three types: hilar bile duct cancer or upper bile duct cancer, middle bile duct cancer and lower bile duct cancer. Primary bile duct cancer is rare, accounting for 0.01% to 0.46% of ordinary autopsies, 2% of autopsies of tumor patients, and 0.3% to 1.8% of bile duct surgeries. In Europe and the United States, gallbladder cancer is 1.5 to 5 times that of bile duct cancer, while Japanese data show that bile duct cancer is more common than gallbladder cancer. The male to female ratio is about 1.5 to 3.0. The age of onset is mostly 50 to 70 years old, but it can also be seen in young people.

According to European scholars, the genetic similarity between concurrent hepatocellular carcinoma and cholangiocarcinoma (HCC-CC) and cholangiocarcinoma (CC) is higher than that between hepatocellular carcinoma, and changes may occur in the common carcinogenic pathways of the two.

Dr. Dominique Cazals-Hatem of Beaujon Hospital in France pointed out that patients with concurrent hepatocellular carcinoma-cholangiocarcinoma (HCC-CC) have dual differentiation of hepatocytes and biliary endothelial cells. To better understand the relationship between cholangiocarcinoma (CC), hepatocellular carcinoma-CC and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), researchers have surveyed the genetic changes of patients.

The researchers selected 9 patients with cholangiocarcinoma, 15 patients with concurrent hepatocellular carcinoma-cholangiocarcinoma, and 3 patients with solitary hepatocellular carcinoma and cholangiocarcinoma lesions ("collision tumors") and compared them with 137 previously characterized HCC patients by detecting loss of heterozygosity (LOH), p53, and β-catenin mutations using 400 microsatellite markers.

Results: TP53 gene mutations were found in 6 patients with cholangiocarcinoma and concurrent hepatocellular carcinoma-cholangiocarcinoma. Two patients with collision tumors had CTNNB1/β-catenin, but no patients with cholangiocarcinoma or concurrent hepatocellular carcinoma-cholangiocarcinoma had mutations.

Patients with cholangiocarcinoma and concurrent hepatocellular carcinoma-cholangiocarcinoma have high levels of chromosomal instability. More than 50% of cholangiocarcinoma and concurrent hepatocellular carcinoma-cholangiocarcinoma patients have recurrent specific LOH at chromosomes 3p and 14q, while less than 10% of hepatocellular carcinoma patients have deletions of these chromosomal regions. The researchers defined minimal common deletion regions (MCRDs) at 3p24-p14 and 14q24-q32, respectively.

Through the introduction above, I believe that now everyone has some understanding of whether bile duct cancer is a genetic disease. Yes, bile duct cancer has certain genetic factors, but this cannot prove that bile duct cancer will definitely be inherited. If you are not exposed to some external causes, you will not suffer from bile duct cancer.