PSA: VN era Vets, Liver Flukes & Cancer

[JJ_BPK]

Might be worth talking to your primary GP and getting tested.

Additionally, any of the rest of you bastards that have been in the bush in Asia, Africa, Central-South America.... winning hearts and minds in the last 30yrs?

I don't think liver flukes are SEA centric.

A parasite that can live for decades may be slowly killing Vietnam War veterans: study

By the time symptoms appear, patients are often in tremendous pain, with just a few months to live

HERALD, W.Va. — A half a century after serving in Vietnam, hundreds of veterans have a new reason to believe they may be dying from a silent bullet — test results show some men may have been infected by a slow-killing parasite while fighting in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

The Department of Veterans Affairs this spring commissioned a small pilot study to look into the link between liver flukes ingested through raw or undercooked fish and a rare bile duct cancer. It can take decades for symptoms to appear. By then, patients are often in tremendous pain, with just a few months to live.

Of the 50 blood samples submitted, more than 20 per cent came back positive or bordering positive for liver fluke antibodies, said Sung-Tae Hong, the tropical medicine specialist who carried out the tests at Seoul National University in South Korea.

“It was surprising,” he said, stressing the preliminary results could include false positives and that the research is ongoing.

Northport VA Medical Center spokesman Christopher Goodman confirmed the New York facility collected the samples and sent them to the lab. He would not comment on the findings, but said everyone who tested positive was notified.

Gerry Wiggins, who served in Vietnam from 1968 to 1969, has already lost friends to the disease. He was among those who got the call.

“I was in a state of shock,” he said. “I didn’t think it would be me.”

The 69-year-old, who lives in Port Jefferson Station, New York, didn’t have any symptoms when he agreed to take part in the study, but hoped his participation could help save lives. He immediately scheduled further tests, discovering he had two cysts on his bile duct, which had the potential to develop into the cancer, known as cholangiocarcinoma. They have since been removed and — for now — he’s doing well.

link to article

[Dean Jarvis]

I ate lunch all the time with my Cambodians and it was always rice and fish. We also had a diet of fish while in the bush. The guy in the picture is holding a string of fish we caught with a hand grenade.


On my last visit to the VA I asked the doctor if they were testing for this and she had no idea what I was talking about. So it doesn't seem to be taken seriously by the VA.

[JJ_BPK]

Suggestion: I always start with my private primary Dr. If she finds anything, we discuss doing a nexus letter for the VA.