Liver tumors: first comes the fat, then the cancer

Christiane Fux studied journalism and psychology in Hamburg. The experienced medical editor has been writing magazine articles, news and factual texts on all conceivable health topics since 2001. In addition to her work for, Christiane Fux is also active in prose. Her first crime novel was published in 2012, and she also writes, designs and publishes her own crime plays.

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More and more patients are developing liver cancer. The risk of tumors does not only increase with severe liver diseases, but with fatty liver.

Fatty liver problems are also on the rise in Germany. In the past, the problem was usually excessive alcohol consumption, but now so-called non-alcoholic fatty livers occupy the top position. They mainly affect overweight people and diabetics, but also people of normal weight who eat unhealthily and accumulate too much belly fat.

If the organ is too fatty, it becomes inflamed - after all, it scars. This is how cirrhosis of the liver develops, in which the performance of the organ continues to decline. In addition, such shriveled livers are more likely to develop liver cancer.

But that apparently also works without the detour via cirrhosis: Researchers working with Kristin Eckel-Mahan from the University of Texas have shown that too much fat in the liver inhibits the activity of a protein that keeps tumors in check. "The study provides a possible explanation for why the number of liver cancer in men and women is increasing," explains Eckel-Mahan.

Blocked tumor inhibition

Her research focuses on the deadliest form of liver cancer, known as hepatocellular carcinoma, which often occurs in combination with a non-alcoholic fatty liver. At least in experiments with mice, the researchers were able to show that an interaction of very high-fat food and blocked HNF4-alpha sets biological mechanisms in motion in the liver that promote unregulated cell division in the liver.

The researchers now hope to be able to use the gene activity to find out which patients with fatty liver are particularly at risk of developing liver cancer. A screening program for early detection would then make sense for them.

Sick with no complaints

Experts estimate that 20 to 30 percent of Europeans already have fatty liver. Most of them have no idea about it, because the fatty organ does not cause any problems for a long time. Often those affected do not feel pressure in the upper abdomen until the liver has already enlarged significantly. Fatty liver is found more and more often even in overweight children and adolescents.

In contrast to cirrhosis of the liver, which cannot be reversed, those affected can completely normalize fatty liver disease by changing their lifestyle.

Effective strategies are: