The American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, or AASLD, journal “Hepatology” highlighted an article published by Haesuk Park, Ph.D., an assistant professor of pharmaceutical outcomes and policy. She and her team, including Chao Chen, Wei Wang and Linda Henry, collaborated with faculty at the UF College of Medicine, Robert L. Cook, M.D., and David R. Nelson, M.D.
The article titled, “Chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) increases the risk of chronic kidney disease (CKD) while effective HCV treatment decreases the incidence of CKD,” was selected for an editorial highlight by the journal which has an impact factor of 13.25.
In the retrospective analysis of 56,448 patients infected with the hepatitis C virus, or HCV, a propensity score matched 169,344 non-HCV patients. “We found HCV-infected patients had a 27 percent increased risk of chronic kidney disease, or CKD, compared to an uninfected control group, with a two-fold and 17-fold higher risk of membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis and cryoglobulinemia, respectively,” Park said.
Among HCV patients, those who received therapy had a 30 percent decreased risk of developing CKD compared to those who received no treatment. The research team also found that disturbingly, 79 percent of HCV patients did not receive any HCV treatment, indicating that barriers to treatment still exist. This paper provides the first US general population based-evidence to support that HCV infection is linked to an increased risk of CKD whereas HCV treatment can prevent the development of CKD. The findings highlight that treating HCV early helps change the extrahepatic burden of CKD associated with HCV.