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Daily News: Pancreatic Cancer Linked to Hepatitis B
Thursday November 20, 2008
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Exposure to the hepatitis B virus may increase the risk of pancreatic cancer, researchers at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The National Institutes of Health-funded study also suggests that pancreatic cancer patients treated with chemotherapy may face reactivation of hepatitis B.

With an established link of hepatitis to liver cancer, the proximity of the liver to the pancreas and the fact that they share blood vessels and ducts make the pancreas a potential target for hepatitis viruses, adds lead author and assistant professor Manal Hassan, MD, PhD.

The first-of-its-kind study began in 2000, considering the presence of hepatitis B and C viruses in 476 M.D. Anderson patients with early-stage pancreatic cancer and 879 other people matched by age, gender, and race. Exposure to hepatitis B was significantly higher (7.6%) in people with pancreatic cancer than in healthy people (3.2%), but exposure to hepatitis C was not significantly different in the groups, Hassan says.

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