Avoiding infections may prevent you from getting cancer

A new study printed in the The Lancet states that avoiding infections may prevent you from getting cancer.

We hear about the many ways we can get cancer every day. Sometimes it seems as if it doesn’t matter we eat, where we live, or even the way we sleep, we will get cancer. Yet, a new study in The Lancet shows that getting sick may cause cancer. Avoiding certain infections may help prevent some of these cancers.

The study included looking at 27 different types of cancer in 184 countries throughout the world. In collaboration with the International Agency for Research on Cancer, what they discovered may help us impact the future of fighting cancer. The four causative agents that were most prevalent in this research are various bacterial and viral infections. Helicobacter pylori, hepatitus B and C, and the human papilloma virus, otherwise known as HPV were the perpetrators. Of the nearly 2 million cancers that develop per year, one in six of them were caused by a virus, bacteria, or parasite. One-sixth of all these cancers are preventable. These are all avoidable infections.
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Interesting to note that nearly one third of the two million cancers were in people younger than age 50. Women and men were different in the cancers they expressed. But the effect is the same. Cervical cancer was the main cancer found in women, with the main cause of that cancer being HPV. This accounted for half of all preventable cancers in women. For men, 80 percent of their cancer occurred as gastric or liver cancer that were triggered by some type of infectious agent.

Of all the cancers that were caused by infectious agents that can be avoided, the only one that was not curable was Hepatitus C. In order for this to be prevented from occurring, education is essential. It must not be assumed that the public in general know how to avoid this infection, or any of the others either. Helicobactor pylori can be treated with antibiotics, and Hepatitus B and HPV can be prevented with vaccines. There is no vaccine against Hepatitus C. Again, education and action is necessary to prevent the cancers from occurring that are associated with these infections.

Cancer treatment is available for those who develop it, but it really is not very effective. Therefore, prevention is the main key to preventing the infections from occurring in the first place. Public health departments can become involved in this matter, by getting out and educating the public. The public should then use educated decisions in preventing and avoiding the infections from occurring in the first place. The public health departments can focus on a few methods for development of their education plans. These include vaccination, both benefits and risks that are associated with it, safer injection practices, and discussing antimicrobial treatments.

Source : http://emaxhealth.com/1272/avoiding-infections-may-prevent-you-getting-cancer