tissue with active HCV
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VIENNA, AUSTRIA—A 5-year retrospective study has shown that the cancer rate in patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV) is about double that for people without HCV, even when liver cancer is excluded.
And when liver cancer is included, the rate increases to 2.5 times higher in people with HCV.
Researchers presented these findings at the International Liver Congress 2015 as abstract 0058.
The team reviewed patient records from 2008 to 2012 at Kaiser Permanente Southern California, recording all cancer diagnoses in patients 18 years or older with or without HCV.
During the 5-year time period, there were 145,210 patient years in the HCV cohort and 13,948,826 patient years in the non-HCV cohort.
The mean age at cancer diagnosis was 61.8 in the HCV cohort and 63.5 in the non-HCV cohort.
Researchers recorded 2213 cancer diagnoses in the HCV cohort (1524/100,000). This number decreased to 1654 when they excluded liver cancer (1139/100,000).
In the non-HCV cohort, they recorded 84,419 cancer diagnoses (605/100,000), which decreased to 83,795 when liver cancer was excluded (601/100,000).
Cancer types known to be associated with HCV include non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), renal and prostate cancers, and liver cancer.
NHL occurred 3.63 times more frequently in patients with HCV than in those without HCV, and myeloma occurred 2.93 times more frequently.
Renal cancer occurred 3.27 times and prostate cancer 1.98 times more frequently in patients with HCV than in those without.
“The results suggest that cancer rates are increased in the cohort of hepatitis C patients versus the non-hepatitis C patients, both including and excluding liver cancers,” said senior study author Lisa Nyberg, MD, MPH, of Kaiser Permanente.
“These findings certainly point to the suggestion that hepatitis C may be associated with an increased risk of cancer.”
However, she added that the findings “must be interpreted with caution, as the study also showed that confounding factors such as alcohol abuse, tobacco, obesity, and diabetes modified the results.”
