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Treatment of Hepatitis C Reduces Incidence of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma
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Researchers from Japan have reported that viral elimination in hepatitis C virus (HCV) infected patients reduces the incidence of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL). The details of this study appeared in the December, 2007 issue of the American Journal of Medicine.
Hepatitis C affects approximately 170 million individuals worldwide. Following acute infection, the virus persists in many patients and a minority of patients develop chronic disease. Chronic hepatitis can progress slowly over many decades to chronic active hepatitis and cirrhosis, ultimately leading to end-stage liver disease or hepatocellular carcinoma. Studies from other countries, but not from the United States, have also shown an increased incidence of NHL in patients with HCV infection. Some researches suspect that this correlation can only be observed in populations where HCV is highly prevalent.
The current study was carried in 501 patients with HCV infection who had never received interferon and 2,708 patients who had received interferon. These authors reported that by one year, 0.6% of untreated patients had developed NHL which by 5 years had increased to 2.3% and by 10 years to 2.6%. In contrast, there were no cases at 5, 10 and 15 years for the 1,048 patients with HCV infection who had sustained virologic response. The remaining patients who were treated and had persistent viral infection had an incidence of NHL of 0.4% at the fifth year, 1.5% at the tenth year and 2.6% at the fifteenth year.
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