HCV eradication induced by direct-acting antiviral agents reduces the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma (original) (raw)

It is unclear whether direct-acting antiviral (DAA) treatment-induced sustained virologic response (SVR) reduces the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. We aimed to determine the impact of DAA-induced SVR on HCC risk. We identified 62,354 patients who initiated antiviral treatment in the Veterans Affairs (VA) national healthcare system from 1/1/1999 to 12/31/2015, including 35,871 (58%) interferon-only regimens, 4535 (7.2%) DAA+interferon regimens and 21,948 (35%) DAA-only regimens. We retrospectively followed patients until 6/15/2017 to identify incident cases of HCC. We used Cox proportional hazards regression to determine the association between SVR and HCC risk or between type of antiviral regimen (DAA-only vs DAA+interferon vs Interferon-only) and HCC risk. We identified 3271 incident cases of HCC diagnosed at least 180 days after initiation of antiviral treatment during a mean follow-up of 6.1 years. The incidence of HCC w...