Abstract
Context:
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common cancers in the world but with a striking geographical variation in incidence; most of the burden is in developing countries. This geographic variation in HCC incidence might be due to geographic differences in the prevalence of various etiological factors.Evidence Acquisition:
Here, we review the epidemiological evidence linking dietary exposure to aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) and risk of HCC, possible interactions between AFB1 and hepatitis B virus (HBV) or polymorphisms of genes involved in AFB1-related metabolism as well as DNA repair.Results:
Ecological, case-control and cohort studies that used various measures of aflatoxin exposure including dietary questionnaires, food surveys and biomarkers are summarized.Conclusions:
Taken together, the data suggest that dietary exposure to aflatoxins is an important contributor to the high incidence of HCC in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where almost 82% of the cases occur.Keywords
Aflatoxins Aflatoxin-albumin Adducts Hepatitis B Virus Hepatocellular Carcinoma
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© 2012, Author(s). This open-access article is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.