A decidedly important discovery comes from the world of science: liver cancer can be detected up to five years earlier.
The study that proves this theory was carried out by Airc Foundation and later published on Journal of Hepatology Reports.
Well, according to the researchers, a low concentration of HDL cholesterol levels in patients who have a fatty liver can be a sign to predict the development of future liver cancer.
Want to find out more about this important study? Let’s analyze it in the course of this article.
Early detection of liver cancer with the cholesterol test: the discovery
To understand how research has arrived at this discovery we have to take a few steps back. In fact, until a few years ago it was thought that liver cancer was related only and exclusively to hepatitis B and C.
Subsequently, several studies have debunked this theory and found that this tumor comes due to hepatocellular carcinoma.
This it develops mainly in people aged between 55 and 75 years which appear to be healthy.
In fact, these don’t have any symptoms during the first periods, nothing that triggers the so-called alarm bell.
However, subjects affected by hepatocarcinoma already have various problems in the liver, characterized by the accumulation of fat. All this could lead, over time, to the creation of a fibrosis.
As a result, the medical world has been looking for a way to diagnose liver cancer quickly and quickly for years.
Now that you understand all this, let’s move on: a study conducted by Professor Antonio Moschetta of the Aldo Moro University of Bari has shown that there is a correlation between subjects with a low level of HDL cholesterol (the good one, to be clear) and the appearance of hepatocellular carcinoma.
In short, according to the doctor, this could help to identify the onset of the tumor in advance, up to five years earlier.
How does early diagnosis of liver cancer work?
Here we are at the question that many will have asked themselves: how does early diagnosis of liver cancer work?
According to what has been learned from Moschetta’s studies, subjects who developed liver cancer had low HDL cholesterol levels in the previous five years.
Furthermore, it was found that these subjects showed a increase in waist circumferencewhich means an increase in visceral fat, a symbol of inflammation in the body.
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Consequently, thanks to this discovery it could be possible to predict which subjects are most at risk of developing liver cancer well in advance, even before the specific symptoms of the disease are developed.
In this way it could be possible to prevent the onset of cancer, by means of nutritional and pharmacological therapies.
Just helping at-risk patients change their lifestyle could significantly reduce the incidence of liver cancer.