Prediction of efficacy of interferon treatment of chronic hepatitis C and occurrence of HCC after interferon treatment by a new classification.

One hundred and twenty-one chronic hepatitis C patients were administered interferon (IFN) and divided into two groups: 31 complete responders (CR) with prolonged HCV-RNA negative 1 year after treatment and 90 non-complete responders (non-CR), including partial responders (PR) with transiently negative HCV-RNA and non-responders (NR) with continuously positive HCV-RNA. Liver biopsy specimens were classified into four grades and stages according to the degree of severity and the extent of fibrosis, respectively. No correlation was observed between the rate of IFN efficacy and grading. By staging, however, a difference in the efficacy of IFN was observed between F1 or F2 and F3 (0.05 < p < 0.1 and 0.01 < p < 0.025, respectively). Of the CR, 0% (0/5) were at F0 and 27.9% (24/86) at F1, 42.9% (6/14) at F2, and 6.3% (1/16) at F3. Another group of 118 chronic hepatitis patients (31 CR, 41 PR and 46 NR) followed up for over 2 years after IFN treatment were analyzed. By staging, 7 cases were at F0, 76 at F1, 18 at F2, and 17 at F3. HCC occurred in 1 of the 31 CR cases (representing an annual incidence rate of 1.21%), in 4 of the 41 PR cases (4.08%), and in 4 of the 46 NR cases (3.55%). HCC did not occur in any of the 7 cases at F0 (representing an annual incidence rate of 0%); it occurred in 2 of the 76 cases at F1 (1.01%), in 1 of the 18 cases at F2 (2.28%), and in 6 of the 17 cases at F3 (16.57%). These results suggest that the new classification would be conducive to roughly predicting the efficacy of IFN treatment and the occurrence of HCC after IFN treatment.