Estudio sobre la sobrecarga de hierro en pacientes con hepatitis C crónica / [A study on hepatic iron overload in chronic hepatitis C patients].

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Hepatitis C is a worldwide chronic liver disease. Different factors have been found to be associated with an increased progression to severe liver fibrosis, such as alcohol intake higher than 30 g/day, older age at infection and co-infection. Nevertheless, different research centers have found conflicting data concerning the liver iron overload fibrogenic role. AIM: To assess the association between hepatic iron overload and fibrosis stage grades in hepatitis C Virus carriers, hepatic steatosis and demographic variables. METHODS: In this descriptive study we recruited 290 positive anti-HCV and qualitative HCV-RNA, treatment naive chronic hepatitis C outpatients registered fom 2007 to 2009 at the Federal University of Bahia’s Hospital. The variables studied in the liver biopsy results were 1) fibrosis stage according to META VIR score (F0-F4), 2) iron overload presence or absence according to Perls staining, and 3) presence or absence of steatosis. Fibrosis stages were categorized as mild/moderate (F0-F2) and severe (F3-F4). Exclusion criteria were hepatitis B virus and human immunodeficiency virus co-infection, and primary or secondary hemochromatosis. The statistical analysis was performed using Chi-square and Student’s t tests, with the ssoftware SPSS 17. A P value < 0.05 was considered as significant. RESULTS: Severe fibrosis was statistically associated with older age, iron overload presence (P = 0.003) and steatosis (P = 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: In this study hepatic iron overload and hepatic steatosis were associated with severe hepatic fibrosis (METAVIR F3-F4).