Hepatitis B and C viruses can cause common blood cancer, research reveals

London (Uttam Hindu News): Hepatitis B and C viruses can cause the most common blood cancer ‘multiple myeloma’. This has come to light in a research. This research opens a new option for the treatment of the fatal disease. The finding is based on a patient who was cured of multiple myeloma after being treated for hepatitis C a few years ago. This patient had surprised a team of Spanish researchers.

The causes of multiple myeloma disease have not been known yet. Although it has long been suspected to be related to infectious pathogens, this connection has never been verified and the cause is not understood. The team from the Hospital 12 de Octubre (H12O) and the National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) in Madrid, Spain, found that eliminating the infection with antivirals is often the way to fight this type of cancer.

Recognition of this association between viral hepatitis and multiple myeloma, as well as the presence of myeloma monoclonal gammopathies in a previously unknown disorder, has important meaningful implications, the team wrote in an editorial in the journal Haematologica. Early identification of hepatitis B or C virus infection in these individuals may lead to appropriate antiviral treatment and result in improved outcomes, he said.

Multiple myeloma (MM) is an overgrowth of blood cells that make antibodies (also called immunoglobulins), proteins that protect the body from infection.

In myeloma a certain antibody is continuously produced, different in each case depending on the infectious agent. The theory proposes that it is caused by repeated exposure to an uninfected infectious agent that alters the biochemical signals involved in the production of that specific antibody. The case of a patient cured of myeloma after treatment for hepatitis C supports this theory. The team hypothesized that the body was no longer exposed to the hepatitis virus long enough because the antiviral drug eliminated it, and that the myeloma was missing the cells that make anti-hepatitis-C antibodies.

To test whether this was indeed the case, two studies were conducted, involving 54 patients with monoclonal gammopathy and hepatitis, 9 patients with hepatitis C in the initial study, and 45 patients with hepatitis B in the study published in Haematologica. . Most of them discovered that the antibodies they were producing consistently and excessively were actually targeting the hepatitis virus. They then analyzed a broader group of multiple myeloma patients (more than 1,300) infected with hepatitis B and hepatitis C (more than 1,200).

In both groups, they concluded that those who received antiviral treatment “were significantly more likely to survive.”

Multiple myeloma or gammopathy in patients infected with hepatitis B or hepatitis C viruses may be caused by these viruses, and the study shows the importance of antiviral treatment in these patients, the researchers said.