Parasites might cause rare cancer in Vietnam vets

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

The Department of Veterans Affairs commissioned a small pilot study this past spring 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 and have just a few months to live.

Of the 50 blood samples submitted, more than 20 percent 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 that 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, already has 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 bile-duct cancer, known as cholangiocarcinoma. They have since been removed and