Hepatitis C Symptoms, Treatment & Causes: Condition Linked to Liver, Lymphoma, Renal & Prostate Cancer

Getting hepatitis C may lead to at least 2.5 times increased risk of getting renal cancer, prostate cancer, and lymphoma according to a new study.

Hepatitis C is a disease brought about by the Hepatitis C virus (HCV). It is an infectious disease that primarily affects the liver. Some symptoms include jaundice, fatigue, joint pain, sore muscles, belly pain, itchy skin, and cirrhosis. This illness can either be acute or chronic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Acute HCV infection is short-term and can occur within the first 6 months of exposure to the virus. This can often lead to chronic infection. Chronic Hepatitis C, however, is the more serious of the two and can cause long-term health conditions and even death.

Hepatitis C is spread through blood. Nowadays, most people are infected through needle or paraphernalia sharing through drug use. Other less known ways to get infected with the virus is being born to a Hepatitis C positive mother and sexual intercourse. There is currently no available vaccine for Hepatitis C.

A new study by Dr. Lisa Nyberg and her team from Kaiser Permanente Southern California reports that those individuals with Hepatitis C virus have a higher risk of developing liver cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, prostate cancer, and renal cancer.

For the research, the team analyzed all cancer diagnoses in KPSC among patients aged 18 and above over a five year period, starting 2008 to 2012.

They were able to identify more than 2,000 cancer diagnoses within the 5-year time frame, and excluding liver cancer, more than 1,6000 diagnoses remained. According to Medical News Today, there were more than 84,000 cancer diagnoses that are identified among patients without hepatitis c virus and more than 83,000 cancer diagnoses still remain after liver cancer was excluded.

"The results suggest that cancer rates are increased in the cohort of hepatitis C patients versus the non-hepatitis C patients, both including and excluding liver cancers. These findings certainly point to the suggestion that hepatitis C may be associated with an increased risk of cancer," Dr. Nyberg said.

The researchers believe that patients who have hepatitis C have 2.5 times higher chance to be diagnosed with cancer than patients without the infection. If excluding liver cancer, the risk still remains twice as high for patients with the hepatitis c virus.

The scientists believe that further research should be done to known the link between hepatitis C and cancer.

"This data adds to the evidence bank linking hepatitis C with an increased risk of cancer and highlights that there is still a long way to go in order to fully understand this complex and devastating disease," according to Dr. Laurent Castera of the European Association for the Study of the Liver.