Coffee and Cigarettes May Protect Against Liver Disease

[longknife]

Dec. 14, 2013 —

Coffee and cigarette smoking may protect against the rare liver disease Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (PSC), study shows.

Wow! I quit smoking 15 or so years ago but continue to consume eight or more cups of hi=tech coffee every day. So far, the article's right as I have absolutely no kidney problems. Read the article @ Coffee and cigarettes may protect against liver disease

 

[waltky]

Liver cancer is 2nd most deadly form of cancer worldwide...

Study: Western Liver Cancer Standards Inadequate
January 12, 2016 - Experts are calling for more targeted standards in developing countries to help diagnose and treat risk factors for liver cancer. It's currently the second most deadly form of cancer worldwide.

Liver cancer accounts for some 750,000 deaths a year globally. Experts say only pancreatic cancer accounts for more deaths. In Western countries, liver cancer typically strikes middle age men over 60, who drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes. But the patient profile is a bit different in developing countries, including sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and China. There, it’s not uncommon to see liver cancer in young people. “It can be four or five decades earlier, so in fact you are losing half of your life when you are in such major trouble," said Pascal Pineau.

Pineau, a cancer geneticist at Pasteur Institute in Paris, says more than 86 percent of liver cancer deaths occur in the developing world, but standards to diagnose and treat the disease follow guidelines based on the older Western patients. The guidelines help doctors determine the best course of treatment. Pineau was part of a team of French and Peruvian researchers who conducted a study in the Latin American country involving 250 liver cancer patients who underwent surgery. Their average age was 36, and relatively few had cirrhosis, or hardening of liver tissue, which is common in Western liver cancer patients.

Chemotherapy medicine is readied for a liver cancer patient at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.​

Under the treatment guidelines, Pineau says those patients might have been written off as incurable, despite their young age and the lack of cirrhosis. They would not have been given potentially life-extending treatment, including surgery, for the lethal disease. Pineau says most patients in developing countries get the most common form of liver cancer (hepatocellular carcinoma) after being infected with hepatitis B for a long period of time. “You are living in sub-Saharan Africa and you are infected with hepatitis B virus, but you are also eating food contaminated with toxins from microscopic fungi, and then you will develop the liver cancer," he said.

He says many liver cancers worldwide could be avoided through hepatitis B vaccination, but there’s a hitch. The vaccine, endorsed by the World Health Organization, is a series of four injections that Pineau says is not easy to get for many people living in remote areas. “I suspect that in some occasions, the vaccination is not done. The immunization is not done," he said. In addition to increasing the number of people who get vaccinated against hepatitis B, writing in the journal Heliyon, Pineau and colleagues call for changing the treatment guidelines to help young liver cancer patients who for now might be considered incurable.

Study: Western Liver Cancer Standards Inadequate

See also:

E. Africa Launches Program to Prevent, Control Pandemic Threats
January 13, 2016 — Starting in 2014, West Africa experienced the largest Ebola outbreak in history, killing more than 11,000 people and bringing the threat of global pandemic to worldwide consciousness. Scientists believe the outbreak started with a small boy who contracted the virus from a bat.

But Ebola is hardly the only disease caused by microbes transferred between animals and humans, and as the global population continues to grow, along with demand for food, similar threats are likely to arise. Tuesday at a hotel in Nairobi, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the U.S. Agency for International Development launched the East African component of FAO’s Emerging Pandemic Threats, or EPT-2 program. The program is designed to help detect, prevent, and control new "zoonotic" diseases, meaning those which can be passed between animals and humans.

Subhash Morzaria is the global coordinator of the EPT-2 program at FAO. He said these diseases can be transmitted through the air or by touching infected fluids or materials. “Whatever the mode of transmission ... if these infectious diseases persist in our animal populations, then we have a constant risk of this disease potentially becoming pandemic and causing huge, huge outbreaks and morbidity and mortality in humans, and in animals as well,” said Morzaria. Ebola is only one of the zoonotic diseases. Others include HIV and AIDS, influenza, including those commonly known as avian flu and swine flu, and SARS, MERS-CoV, Marburg, and Nipah. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated six out of every 10 infectious diseases in humans are spread from animals.

This undated colorized transmission electron micrograph image made available by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows an Ebola virus virion, or infectious agent.​

More people, more risk

The United Nations projects that the world’s current population of 7.3 billion people will reach 9.7 billion in 2050. This rapid increase in the number of people means that the demand for food will also rise. “Now these production systems will change very rapidly to meet this demand, and it’s possible that some very risky practices in the production of livestock might occur, and these risky practices might create an environment for evolution of new pathogens and spread,” FAO’s Morzaria said. Kenya’s director of veterinary services, Dr. Kisa Juma Ngeiywa, said new pathogens can spread further than ever in today’s mobile society. “Let me use the H7N9 influenza, which was in China,” said Ngeiywa. “That is a disease, one of the influenzas on live bird markets. Now, if you look at the airplanes, Kenya Airways, Ethiopian Airlines, and others, they are going to China and they are coming to Kenya, every day. So, because of that there is a big vulnerability, unless we put measures to be able to see and stop it from spreading.”

And Morzaria said that everyone has a stake in the process. “Everybody is at threat. The virus doesn’t distinguish between a poor and a rich person. It goes and infects and it kills that person if it’s highly infectious and pathogenic,” he said. “So I think this is a global concern.” In October, USAID announced $87 million in new funding for the program. The money will be used to help governments and veterinary services better understand livestock systems and to help conduct proactive surveillance, as well as identifying current and potential pathogens.

E. Africa Launches Program to Prevent, Control Pandemic Threats

 

[longknife]

How the hell do you find two year old threads to post to?