Liver Cancer on the Rise

Liver cancer is one of the world’smost common types of cancer, and one of the most deadly. World-wide prevalence is highest in south-east Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, but it has recently struck Japan particu-larly hard. The number of deaths from liver cancer in Japan increased steadily from about 10,000 in 1975 to 35,000 in 2002 because of an ep-idemic of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). This disorder, which ac-counts for 80 % to 90 % of all cases of liver cancer, is now the third most common cause of cancer death among Japanese men and the fift