Transient biochemical response in interferon therapy decreases the development of hepatocellular carcinoma for five years and improves the long-term survival of chronic hepatitis C patients

Eradication of Hepatitis C Virus Infection and the Development of Hepatocellular Carcinoma

“…As a result, the absolute reduction in risk was 4.6% (CI, 4.2% to 5.0%) for patients achieving an SVR. All of the studies included in the meta-analysis adjusted for age, 9 studies controlled for fibrosis stage (17,27,36,50,51,53,57,58,61), and some studies (46,54) controlled for fibrosis stage with typical markers for advanced fibrosis. One study did not exclude patients with positive hepatitis B serologic test results, but its model was adjusted for the presence of hepatitis B (27).…”

Risk of Hepatocellular Carcinoma Development in Cases of Hepatitis C Treated by Long-Term, Low-Dose PEG-IFNα-2a

“…Imai et al [15] compared the rates of HCC occurrence in 419 cases with IFN treatment and 144 control cases and reported that the incidence of HCC decreased even among cases showing a biological response (p = 0.04) after an average follow-up period of 4 years. Okanoue et al [16] also compared 1,370 cases treated with IFN and 54 untreated cases and reported that the rate of emergence of HCC was lower in biological response cases than in NR cases. On the other hand, long-term, low-dose therapy reportedly led to a decrease in ALT levels as well [8].…”

Interferon therapy for aged patients with chronic hepatitis C: improved survival in patients exhibiting a biochemical response

“…10,[16][17][18][19] Yoshida et al 17 reported that IFN therapy had a preventive effect on liver-related death, bringing Age, sex, time of liver biopsy (until 1992/after 1993) and histologic staging score were adjusted in the Cox proportional hazard analysis Fig. 3.…”

“…[1][2][3][4] In the early 1990s, interferon (IFN) was introduced, and it is now widely used worldwide, as well as in Japan, for the treatment of patients with chronic hepatitis C. Hitherto, many studies, including our own reports, have shown that IFN therapy reduced the incidence of HCC in patients with chronic hepatitis C. [5][6][7][8][9][10] Recently, several groups have studied the effect of IFN therapy on survival in patients with chronic hepatitis C. Most of these studies reported that IFN therapy improved the survival of HCV-related chronic hepatitis and cirrhosis, although some studies did not find any efficacy of IFN therapy on survival. [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] We also reported the beneficial effect of IFN therapy on survival in chronic hepatitis C patients. In that report, we also Background.…”