Association between the job types and the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma in the United States

Abstract

Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has many well-known predisposing factors including viral hepatitis, alcoholconsumption, metabolic syndrome, and cigarette smoking. However, about 30%-40% of patients have no identifiable risk factor, indicating the presence of additional causes that are yet to be discovered. Our study aim was to evaluate the association betweenthe risk of HCC and various occupations.

Methods: We conducted a hospital based case-control study that included 589 HCC patients and 1,098 healthy controls. Multivariate unconditioned logistic regression models were done to control for the confounding effects of well-known HCC riskfactors.

Results: Female sales workers have a significantly higher risk of HCC; after adjusting for demographic factors, cigarette smoking, drinking alcohol, diabetes mellitus, viral hepatitis, and family history of cancer; the adjusted odds ratio (AOR) and 95% confidenceinterval (CI) was (2.8; 1.3-6.0). In contrast, there was a protective association between managers and HCC, which remainedstatistically significant for females after adjusting for confounding factors (OR, 0.2; CI, 0.05-0.6). With regard to the duration ofoccupation, sales workers had no increased risk with job duration, whereas managers working for more than 25 years were atlower risk for HCC development.

Conclusion: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first and largest epidemiological study to observe such associations in USA.The underlying biological explanation should be explored in future experimental studies.