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The China Study Finding Number Three

When a virus strikes, what you eat plays a vital role in your overall health. Scientific findings show that diet (as reflected in blood cholesterol levels) is associated with liver cancer, even when the hepatitis B virus is pervasive in a population.

It has long been known that people with a chronic infection of hepatitis B virus (HBV) are much more likely to get liver cancer. The virus, in a simplistic sense, makes a person ?genetically susceptible? to liver cancer because of the insertion of a significant portion of the HBV gene into the human gene. There is reason to think that good nutrition can minimize this risk, however, by controlling the ?expression? of the gene to cause the cancer.

Liver cancer rates in rural China were higher among counties with higher average blood cholesterol levels, as well as counties with higher HBV infection rates. Higher blood cholesterol levels were convincingly associated with dietary choices. So, to connect the dots, it appears that liver cancer was significantly associated with diet, even in the face of chronic HBV infection.

This finding is supported by laboratory experiments. Using rats that have been similarly ?genetically predisposed? to get liver cancer by HBV, scientists have been able to control how much cancer they get simply by altering the amount of casein (the main dietary protein in cow?s milk) present in their food. Rats with the HBV-altered gene that consume diets composed of 20% casein almost uniformly get cancer. Rats that consume diets composed of 5% casein showed a remarkable decrease in the progression of this cancer.