Primary Liver Cancer and Drug Therapy

An attempt to evaluate the role of drug therapy in the development of primary liver cancer was made by investigating 37 consecutive patients diagnosed during a period of 10 years. 14 patients had previously been apparently healthy, 21 had been treated with drugs, and 2 were chronic alcoholics. The most notable finding was that 9 of the patients had used compounds known to alter the activity of drug-hydroxylating enzymes in the liver. In microscopic examination, the differentiation pattern of the cancer in these 9 patients was of the hepatocellular type, whereas in others a mixture of differentiation types was found. The findings evoke the question of whether long-term therapy with drugs changing the activity of metabolizing enzymes in the liver has some causality for the development of hepatic cancer in man.