Clinical–Liver, Pancreas, and Biliary TractEradication of Hepatitis C Virus in Patients Successfully Treated for Chronic Hepatitis C
Section snippets
Patients and Study Design
Between January 1988 and January 2005, 550 patients who achieved an SVR were included in our data base and were followed up in our center. From January 2005 to June 2006, 344 of these 550 patients seen at our outpatient clinic for a follow-up visit were included in the analysis.
IFN or PEG-IFN was administered either as monotherapy or in combination with ribavirin, according to body weight. Chronic hepatitis C was defined as the presence of anti-HCV antibodies (Ortho HCV Diagnostic System,
Patients
The demographic, clinical, virologic, and histologic characteristics, and the treatment regimens of the 344 patients included and the 206 patients not included are shown in Table 1. The 2 groups of patients were similar according to all the baseline characteristics excepted for the median duration of the follow-up evaluation, which was 3.27 years (range, 0.50–18 y; IQR, 1.68–5.35 y) and 1.26 years (range, 0.50–16 y; IQR, 0.66–3.27 y) in included and nonincluded patients, respectively (P = .002)
Discussion
Our study, investigating the presence of residual HCV RNA with a sensitive assay (TMA) in serum, liver, and PBMCs, together with a histologic follow-up evaluation in a large cohort, confirms an association between sustained biochemical and virologic responses and liver histologic improvements in patients with an SVR to IFN-based therapy. None of the 344 patients included had a relapse during the long-term follow-up evaluation (median, 3.27 y; range, 0.50–18 y; IQR, 1.68–5.35 y). HCV RNA was
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