Role of hepatic HCV–RNA level on the severity of chronic hepatitis C and response to antiviral therapy
Section snippets
Background
Seventy to 80% of patients infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) develop chronic hepatitis C.1 The combination of pegylated interferon and ribavirin induces a sustained virological response (SVR) rate of over 50%.2 Several viral and host related predictive factors for the response to interferon based therapy have been identified.3, 4, 5
The spectrum of liver disease in patients infected with HCV ranges from minimal lesions in HCV asymptomatic carriers to chronic hepatitis with minimal to
Objectives
The aim of our study was to assess the influence of hepatic HCV–RNA level on the severity of liver disease and on the response to antiviral therapy in a large cohort of chronic hepatitis C patients.
Patients selection
We retrospectively studied 130 consecutive patients seen at out patients liver units from 1994 to 2005 for CHC. The diagnosis of CHC was based on biopsy proven chronic hepatitis C and the presence of serum HCV–RNA.
The inclusion criteria were a frozen liver biopsy and a serum sample stored at −80 °C and collected the same day prior to antiviral therapy. The biopsy was performed for routine pathological assessment and a section was immediately frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at −80 °C.
Results
The amount of liver tissue used for analysis weighed between 2.5 and 18 mg (mean 5.8 ± 3.1 mg) from which 3.4–14.5 μg (mean 7.1 ± 3.5 μg) of cellular RNA was extracted. For all the analyses, we used liver HCV–RNA concentration expressed in copies per mg of liver (supplemental data). Baseline characteristics of the 130 patients included in the study are shown in Table 1. Among the 130 patients included in the study 104 patients (80%) received the combination of pegylated interferon plus ribavirin (Table
Discussion
Our study performed in a large cohort of patients (130) with paired liver biopsy and serum shows a correlation between hepatic HCV–RNA and serum HCV–RNA in genotype 1 and 4. Liver HCV–RNA level was not associated with liver fibrosis and response to therapy. A high liver HCV–RNA level was independently associated with HCV genotype 1.
The possibility of sampling errors is the first element to be taken into account for liver parameters. As previously reported by Fanning et al. HCV–RNA is
Conflict of interest statement
None to declare.
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2012, Best Practice and Research: Clinical GastroenterologyCitation Excerpt :Flares of hepatitis seem to occur more frequently in HCV genotype 2 infection which could also translate more severe courses of liver disease [81]. In contrast, viral load is not related to the degree of liver fibrosis or liver damage [56,82,83]. Hepatic steatosis is a histological hallmark of chronic hepatitis C. Several studies showed that steatosis is linked to the grade of liver fibrosis in patients with chronic HCV infection [79].
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