— Christine M. Kukka, Project Manager, HBV Advocate
For the first time, an authoritative study has found that antiviral
treatment appears to reduce the risk of hepatitis B virus (HBV)-related
liver cancer. Even though treated patients had more liver damage, their
cancer rates were similar to untreated, healthier patients.
Researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention examined the health records of 2,671 hepatitis B
patients treated at four health centers across the U.S. between 1992
and 2011. Half of the patients were Asian-American and about 31% (820)
had been treated with antivirals. The treated patients tended to have
more liver damage, were older, male and less likely to be
Asian-American than untreated patients in the study.
Researchers, reporting in the June issue of the journal of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology,
found that 67 (3%) of the 2,671 patients developed liver cancer over
the study period. Twenty of the 820 patients treated with antivirals
developed cancer, compared to 47 of the 1,851 untreated patients.
Treated patients with viral loads less than 20,000
IU/mL had a significantly lower risk of cancer than untreated patients
with similarly low viral loads.
Antivirals appeared to confer
some protection against liver cancer even in patients with fibrosis
(liver inflammation) and cirrhosis (liver scarring), suggesting that
viral loads may be the primary culprit behind liver cancer. By
suppressing viral load, liver cancer was avoided in many of these
high-risk patients with serious liver damage.
Researchers wrote, "...We found that antiviral
treatment had a beneficial effect across a spectrum of viral load
levels (and disease severity.)"
Source: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24107395
Labels: antivirals and HCC
