LETTER

The role of gender on clearance of hepatitis C virus: a different story in an area endemic for hepatitis B and C

Chia-Yen Dai¹, Jee-Fu Huang², Ming-Yen Hsieh², Li-Po Lee², Chi-Kung Ho³, Wan-Long Chuang⁴ and Ming-Lung Yu⁵

¹ Department of Occupational Medicine, Kaohsiung Municipal Hsiao-Kang Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
² Hepatobiliary Division, Department of Internal Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
³ Department of Occupational Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
⁴ Hepatobiliary Division, Department of Internal Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
⁵ Faculty of Internal Medicine, College of Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr M-L Yu
Hepatobiliary Division, Department of Internal Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital, No 100, Tzyou 1st Road, Kaohsiung 807, Taiwan; d820195@gmail.com

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

We read with interest the article by Bakr et al (GUT 2006;55:1183–7). The authors recruited 4720 residents aged 18–65 years from a rural community in Egypt, a country hyperendemic for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, which might be attributed to mass campaigns for intravenous antischistosomal treatment.¹ They found that the HCV antibody (anti-HCV) was positive in 910 individuals (19.3%), and 38.5% of the anti-HCV-positive individuals were negative for serum HCV RNA. Interestingly, the authors concluded that women had a significantly higher HCV clearance rate (44.6% vs 33.7%, respectively; p = 0.001, adjusted OR 1.77) than men, which was similar to reports by Inoue et al² and Yamakawa et al³ from Japan.

We conducted a large-scale community-based study in southern Taiwan, a country hyperendemic for hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection (prevalence of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) 10–20%), and several villages were reported to be hyperendemic for anti-HCV (prevalence . . . [Full text of this article]

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Relevant Article

Higher clearance of hepatitis C virus infection in females compared with males

I Bakr, C Rekacewicz, M El Hosseiny, S Ismail, M El Daly, S El-Kafrawy, G Esmat, M A Hamid, M K Mohamed, and A Fontanet
Gut 2006 55: 1183-1187. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]