Hepatitis B Virus and the Prevention of Primary Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Abstract

Primary hepatocellular carcinoma (PHC or hepatoma) is one of the most lethal and most common cancers in the world. Before 1950, several pathologists noted that PHC usually occurred in livers that were affected with cirrhosis. In the 1950s, workers in West and East Africa suggested that the cirrhosis was of the postnecrotic type, and therefore that both cirrhosis and PHC were end results of viral hepatitis. It was not possible to test this hypothesis at that time, since the virus could not be detected. After the discovery of Australia antigen and its identification in 1967 with a hepatitis virus (later . . .