Findings presented by Katherine McGlynn (NIH) at the AACR 102nd Annual Meeting 2011 indicate that metabolic syndrome, a combination of conditions that increases the risk of heart disease and diabetes may also increase the risk of the two most common types of liver cancer.

A patient is defined as having a metabolic syndrome when at least three of the following five conditions co-exist: raised blood pressure, elevated waist circumference, low HDL or 'good' cholesterol, raised triglyceride levels and raised fasting plasma glucose levels. Individuals with a metabolic syndrome may be at a higher risk of developing hepatocellular carcinoma and intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, the two most common types of primary liver cancer.

For the current study, researchers identified 3,649 cases of hepatocellular carcinoma and 743 cases of intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma. They compared the medical history of these patients with the medical histories of 195,953 cancer-free adults.

Metabolic syndrome was significantly more common among persons who developed HCC (37.1%) and ICC (29.7%) than among persons who did not (17.1%, p<0.0001)

So individuals with liver cancer were significantly more likely than cancer-free persons to have a prior history of metabolic syndrome. Given that approximately one-third of U.S. adults have metabolic syndrome, these findings have implications for the future incidence of both HCC and ICC.