Background: The key endpoint for treatment efficacy in chronic hepatitis C (CHC) is the absence of a detectable virus at 24 weeks after treatment. This study aims to determine the long-term clinical outcomes in patients with CHC after interferon and ribavirin treatment and the factors that influence them.
Methods: A retrospective study was conducted on 259 patients with CHC between 2003 and 2021, and the patients were divided into treated (n = 159) and untreated (n = 100) groups. The median observation duration was four years for the treated group (range: 1-15 years) and four years for untreated groups (range: 1-14 years).
Results: The mean ages of the treated and untreated groups were 47.38 ± 9.07 and 51.17 ± 8.38 years, respectively. Regardless of whether antiviral therapy had been administered, patients with undetectable hepatitis C virus (HCV) load had a lower risk of developing liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) than patients with detectable HCV load (p < 0.05). Furthermore, patients with HCV genotype 1b were more likely to develop cirrhosis and HCC than patients with HCV non-genotype 1b (p < 0.05). Based on the results of multivariate analysis, age of 50 years and above (hazard ratio [HR] = 6.74, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 2.79-16.28) and infection with HCV genotype 1b (HR = 2.43, 95% CI = 1.06-5.56) were significant predictors of liver cirrhosis and HCC development, whereas undetectable HCV RNA load (HR = 0.14, 95% CI = 0.43-0.46) was a protective factor.
Conclusions: During the long-term follow-up, no cases of HCC were discovered in patients with undetectable HCV RNA load. Nevertheless, long-term monitoring is still required in patients with liver cirrhosis, since it increases the risk for developing liver cancer.
Keywords: chronic hepatitis C; cumulative incidence; hepatocellular carcinoma; liver cirrhosis.