LOS ANGELES -- U.S. researchers have found that hepatitis B does not increase the risk for pancreatic cancer, a conclusion contradicting a previous study that found a link between the two.
The new study by researchers at Henry Ford Hospital was presented at the on-going annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases in Boston.
Using data from Henry Ford Health System, the researchers looked at more than 74,000 patients who were tested for hepatitis B between 1995 and 2008.
In the overall analysis, only age was found to be a significant predictor for pancreatic cancer.
"We looked at the incidence of pancreatic cancer among hepatitis B-infected patients over a 13-year period and found that we could not confirm a higher risk for those with a previous exposure to hepatitis B, as a prior study suggested," says Jeffrey Tang, M.D., gastroenterologist at Henry Ford Hospital and lead author of the study.
"When other factors are considered - such as age, race, sex, HIV status, and the presence of diabetes - only older age and presence of diabetes proved significant, whereas prior exposure to hepatitis B was no longer an important variable."
More than 35,000 people in the U.S. die of pancreatic cancer each year and 42,000 new cases are diagnosed, according to the National Cancer Institute. The survival rates for patients with pancreatic cancer are poor.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 800,000 to 1.4 million people have chronic hepatitis B infection. In 2007, an estimated 43,000 people in the United States were newly infected with hepatitis B, although many cases are not reported because many people do not have symptoms.
Hepatitis B is an inflammation of the liver caused by a viral infection.
Copyright 2009
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