Cancer in sashimi and koi pla?

Cancer in sashimi and koi pla?

(BangkokPost.com) Thai researchers have urged people in Southeast Asia to stop eating raw freshwater fish because they risk becoming infected with a parasitic worm that may predispose them to developing liver cancer.

An age old preference for eating uncooked fish dishes like “koi pla” puts people in SE Asia at risk of ingesting trematodes that can cause a type of liver cancer called cholangiocarcinoma (cancer of the bile ducts), say researchers in this week’s Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine.

Banchob Sripa and colleagues of Khon Kaen University discuss the mechanisms by which the food-borne trematode Opisthorchis viverrini (the SE Asian liver fluke) causes cholangiocarcinoma.

They said fluke infection is especially serious in the North and Northeast, the centre of the area where the raw fish Koi Pla is popular.

"Stop eating this, it's the easiest thing to do," Mr Banchob said in a telephone interview with reporters.

The fluke is endemic to Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. In Thailand alone, 6 million people are thought to be infected.

The worms find their way into freshwater fish, and into humans when the fish is consumed raw.

Writing in the latest issue of the PLoS Medicine, the researchers said most people infected showed no symptoms but some went on to develop liver cancer years later.

Less than 1 per cent of those infected will get liver cancer, but those who get infected are in the millions in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

source : www.bangkokpost.com