A retrospective study of prevalence and pattern of international consensus on ANA patterns among patients with hepatitis C virus infection

Shun-Wen Hsiao; Chuan-San Fan; Hsu-Heng Yen; Siou-Ping Huang; Yang-Yuan Chen; Pei-Yuan Su

doi:10.7717/peerj.14200

A retrospective study of prevalence and pattern of international consensus on ANA patterns among patients with hepatitis C virus infection

PeerJ. 2022 Oct 18:10:e14200. doi: 10.7717/peerj.14200. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Shun-Wen Hsiao^#¹, Chuan-San Fan^#¹, Hsu-Heng Yen^{1

2

3

4}, Siou-Ping Huang¹, Yang-Yuan Chen^{1

5

6}, Pei-Yuan Su¹

Affiliations

¹ Division of Gastroenterology, Changhua Christian Hospital, Changhua, Taiwan.
² General Education Center, Chienkuo Technology University, Changhua, Taiwan.
³ Department of Electrical Engineering, Chung Yuan Christian University, Taoyuan, Taiwan.
⁴ College of Medicine, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan.
⁵ Division of Gastroenterology, Yuanlin Christian Hospital, Changhua, Taiwan.
⁶ Department of Hospitality Management, MingDao University, Changhua, Taiwan.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Background: A previous study reported a 30% prevalence of various autoantibodies among patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. The International Consensus on Anti-Nuclear Antibody (ANA) Patterns was recently introduced to classify ANA patterns based on immunoassay on HEp-2 cells. There is no previous report with this newly developed classification to evaluate patients with HCV infection. The study aims to study the prevalence and pattern of ANA patterns among HCV-infected patients.

Methods: We retrospectively analyzed the medical records of patients with HCV infection from September 2020 to June 2021 at our institution. A positive ANA is defined as a titer of more than 1:320. We compared patient features among the positive and negative groups.

Results: Overall, 258 patients were enrolled-184 patients with negative ANA and 74 patients (28.7%) with positive ANA. The mean age was 67.3 in ANA positive group and 61.2 ANA negative group. Female was prominent with ANA positive and accounted for 63.5%. The most detected ANA pattern was AC-1(homogeneous) (25.9%), followed by AC-4(fine speckled) (25.2%) and AC-21(anti-mitochondrial antibody) (9.6%). In ANA positive group, we found a trend of lower HCV viral load (5.72 log₁₀ IU/ML vs. 6.02 log₁₀ IU/ML), lower alanine aminotransferase level (39.5 U/L vs. 44 U/L), and higher advanced fibrosis (F3 and F4) (38.5% vs. 26.1%). In addition, higher positive ANA (more than 1:640) is significantly associated with lower estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) (77.76 vs. 87.94 mL/min/1.73 m², P = 0.044).

Conclusions: A high prevalence (28.7%) of ANA was found in patients with chronic hepatitis C. The presence of positive ANA is not related to the severity of their hepatic manifestation. However, higher positive ANA was significantly associated with lower eGFR.

Keywords: ANA pattern; Anti-nuclear antibodies (ANA); Hepatitis C virus (HCV).

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Aged
Consensus
Female
Hepacivirus*
Hepatitis C* / epidemiology
Humans
Prevalence
Retrospective Studies

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the Changhua Christian Hospital (110-CCH-IRP-040). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.