The Retrospective Research Of Disease Progression In HCV RNA-positive Patients Infected Via Blood Transfusion Without Receiving Antiviral Therapy

Disease progression has not been systematically studied in Chinese HCV patientswho were infected via transfusion. Based on our finding that most of patients infectedvia blood transfusion with HCV infection has been20years. A20year duration ofHCV infection is an important time point to evaluate disease progression, weperformed a systemic retrospective cohort study of804patients withtransfusion-acquired HCV infected. We investigated the occurrences of compensatedcirrhosis, decompensated cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and analyzedthe risk factors related to disease progression. Patients with cirrhosis or HCC wereclassified as serious development group (SD group) and the remaining patients wereclassified as hepatitis group (H group). The two groups showed a significantdifference in age at the time of infection, duration of infection, age at the time ofobservation, and HCV RNA load at the time of observation (P<0.05). Patients in theSD group were significantly older at the time of transfusion, had a longer meanduration of HCV infection, and had lower titers of HCV RNA compared to patients inthe H group. Female gender and age at the time of transfusion were significant riskfactors for HCC in these patients. Our results will be helpful for predicting diseaseprogression in Chinese HCV patients who were infected via blood transfusion. This isparticularly relevant because, at present, HCV patients>50years old showsignificant disease progression and we believe that more patients will develop cirrhosis or HCC in the coming third and fourth decades of infection.