Smokers twice as likely to suffer cancer recurrence Japanese survey

18 May, 2004
 

BEIJING The rate of recurrence of liver cancer among those who smoke more than 10 cigarettes a day is almost double that of nonsmokers, according to research conducted by Kitasato University, Japan.

Akitaka Shibuya, a lecturer at Kitasato University School of Medicine, carried out follow-up studies on 131 patients whose liver cancer was believed to have gone into remission after receiving treatments at the university hospital between 1991 and 2002.

Of the patients, Shibuya conducted research on 73 who were found to have suffered a recurrence of cancer, recording their sex, age, methods of treatment and lifestyle to find the cause of their relapse.

Shibuya found that those who smoked more than 10 cigarettes a day had a 1.8 times higher likelihood of suffering a recurrence of the cancer than nonsmokers.

The survey also found that patients who had contracted hepatitis C were about three times more likely to suffer a relapse than those without the virus--the highest recurrence rate among the categories studied.

Copyright 2004 The Yomiuri Shimbun