Liver Cancer: Will Cases Explode by 2050? Experts Stress "Urgent Global Action"
This work, carried out by a commission of experts from six countries (China, the United States, South Korea, Italy, Spain and France, with which Inserm collaborated in particular), and published in the medical journal The Lancet, highlights "the urgency of global action" against this disease, after having scrutinized the available studies and data.
Liver cancer is the sixth most common cancer and the third most deadly. According to the World Cancer Observatory, worldwide by 2050 the number of new cases will climb to 1.52 million per year, a near doubling, while 1.37 million people will die from it. Eight out of ten of these cancers are hepatocellular carcinomas, a form particularly prevalent in East Asia, North Africa, and Southeast Asia. Globally, the five-year survival rate for patients ranged from 5% to 30% between 2000 and 2014.
However, three out of five liver cancers are due to preventable risk factors that researchers believe should be addressed: viral hepatitis, alcohol consumption and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (characterized by an accumulation of fat in the liver, often associated with obesity).
Hepatitis B and C viruses are expected to remain the leading causes of liver cancer in 2050, while their share is expected to decline (36.9% of cases compared to 39% for the former, 25.9% compared to 29.1% for the latter). While vaccination against hepatitis B is the most effective means of prevention, "coverage remains low in Africa and in low-resource regions" due to its "cost, reluctance to be vaccinated and lack of awareness of its effectiveness" and the lack of mandatory vaccination, the study says.
"In 2015, vaccination of newborns and infants prevented 210 million new chronic hepatitis B infections and is expected to reduce the estimated number of deaths to 1.1 million by 2030," the researchers report. If vaccination coverage is not increased, "17 million hepatitis B-related deaths are expected between 2015 and 2030," they say.
“Coordinate efforts”The proportion of liver cancers due to alcohol consumption and steatosis is expected to increase: the accumulation of fat in the liver will be the cause in 11% of cases in 2050 (compared to 8% in 2022), an increase of 35%, and alcohol in 21.1% of cases by this time, according to their calculations.
