Oct 21, 2007

Stanford focuses on liver cancer

University helps launch new program for local Asian American population

By Kristina Peterson / Daily News Staff Writer

Hans Wang felt no different from normal when a routine blood test in May revealed that he had liver cancer.

Even though the 44-year-old Cupertino resident had been getting annual blood tests, the tumor on his liver was already five centimeters wide - just small enough that doctors could still surgically remove it, he said.

But Wang, now a cancer survivor, is unusual among local Asian Americans. Most are not getting screened for chronic hepatitis B or liver cancer despite their heightened susceptibility to the diseases.

On Thursday, the Asian Liver Center at Stanford University and the American Cancer Society California Chinese Unit unveiled a new outreach program aimed at increasing early liver cancer detection rates in the local Asian population.

"There is no effective chemotherapy to treat liver cancer," Dr. Samuel So, director of the Asian Liver Center, said on Thursday. "The only way of improving chances of liver cancer survival rates is early detection."

Asian Americans are nearly three times as likely to develop liver cancer than other ethnicities largely because of the prevalence of chronic hepatitis B virus in their community, So said. San Francisco has the highest liver cancer rate of any city in the country because of its large Asian population, he said.

The virus that causes hepatitis B is spread through contact with infected blood or other bodily fluids of people who have hepatitis B. Pregnant women who are infected with hepatitis B can also pass the virus on to their babies.

Because 69 percent of Asians living in the United States are foreign born, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, most of those with chronic hepatitis B were infected outside the country, often by dirty medical supplies, So said. Those born in the United States most often contract the disease directly from their mothers, he added.

Almost 10 percent of Asians living in the U.S. have chronic hepatitis B, compared to 0.1 percent of Caucasians, So said. And those infected with chronic hepatitis B have a 25 percent chance of developing liver cancer, according to a paper released this year by So, Steven Lin and Ellen Chang of the Asian Liver Center.

Most alarmingly, in a survey of 3,163 Bay Area Asian Americans screened for hepatitis B, between half to two-thirds of those with the disease were unaware they were infected, according to the paper.

May Sung, vice president of the American Cancer Society's California Division, said language barriers, lack of access to health care and cultural taboos all contribute to Asian Americans not getting screened for hepatitis B and for liver cancer.

Starting this week, a series of free forums conducted in Chinese will take place across the Bay Area, offering cancer education and free screening tests for hepatitis B.

Wang said without the blood tests, he would never have suspected he had cancer.

"I didn't feel anything different," he said. Wang only began getting annual tests after his mother died of liver cancer in 2000.

So said the majority of his patients with early liver cancer have no symptoms and as a result often come to his clinic too late for help. On Tuesday, So saw a recently-diagnosed patient who has only three or four months left to live.

"Week after week, I see people dying from a disease they should not be dying from," said So, adding that liver cancer most often strikes people between the ages of 35 and 65, "in the prime of their life."

The number of liver cancer cases is still increasing as cases of other types of cancer decline nationwide, he said.

"It sticks out like a sore thumb," So said.

The outreach program will host its first forum from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. Oct. 27 at 1669 Flanigan Drive in San Jose.



E-mail Kristina Peterson at kpeterson@dailynewsgroup.com.




ON THE WEB:

For more information, visit the Asian Liver Center at http://liver.stanford.edu or the American Cancer Society Northern California Chinese Unit at http://nccu.cancer.org.