Some patients came to Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Hospital with a positive EBV test and asked the doctor to predict the year of their nasopharyngeal cancer. Because some experts recently claimed that they can predict nasopharyngeal cancer 18 years in advance, Professor Hong Mingxiang, director of the Nasopharyngeal Cancer Committee of the Chinese Anti-Cancer Association and director of the Nasopharyngeal Cancer Department, said, “It is true that the incidence of nasopharyngeal cancer is higher in those who are positive for EBV antibodies than in those who are negative, but there are still very few positive people who have nasopharyngeal cancer.”
Hong said, “Different antibodies, titer levels, gender, region, etc. have different risks of developing the disease, and it is not possible to accurately predict whether a person will get cancer and in which year. There is no way to predict accurately. Therefore, the best way is to strengthen the awareness of prevention and go to regular oncology specialists or oncology hospitals for regular checkups, so that early detection, early diagnosis and early treatment are the key. In addition, there is a lack of effective drugs to prevent the occurrence of nasopharyngeal carcinoma, and EBV-positive patients do not need to undergo targeted treatment. There is no need to be alarmed by a positive test because the probability of confirming nasopharyngeal cancer even among positive cases is very low.”
Guangdong Province is a region with a high incidence of nasopharyngeal cancer. EBV and nasopharyngeal carcinoma are closely related, with a positive antibody rate of 5-10% and a detection rate of 253/100,000 for nasopharyngeal carcinoma in Guangdong. Regular monitoring of antibody levels and trends can be predictive of the development of nasopharyngeal carcinoma, making it possible to detect very early stage nasopharyngeal carcinoma, even in patients with no clinical manifestations and no abnormalities on indirect microscopy.
There is a significant family aggregation of patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma. According to several surveys conducted by the hospital in high incidence areas, about 10% of patients with nasopharyngeal cancer have a family history of cancer, half of which are nasopharyngeal cancer. In one place in Guangdong, more than 10 people in one family were found to have suffered from nasopharyngeal cancer one after another.
In addition to the risk group with family history, those who have the following symptoms should also be taken seriously: if there is persistent nasal congestion, nosebleed, hearing loss, tinnitus, headache, facial numbness, double vision, swollen lymph nodes in the neck, etc., they should go to a specialist or a specialized hospital for examination in time.
There is one condition that should not be ignored: if middle-aged or elderly men who are over 40 years old, especially those who have long-term smoking and drinking habits, have lymph nodes in the neck for one to several months, and have symptoms of progressive enlargement, painless and hard texture, they should go to a specialist hospital in time because most of these cases are metastatic lymph node cancer. In this case, the primary lesion should be carefully investigated according to the metastatic area of the lymph nodes in the neck for early diagnosis and early treatment.