Autoimmune hepatitis in patients with chronic HBV and HCV infections: patterns of clinical characteristics, disease progression and outcome

Abstract

We retrospectively investigated the characteristics, patterns of disease progression, outcome and difficulties in the management in 11 patients with concurrent autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) and HBV or HCV infections (5 HCV and 6 HBV including 2 with HDV co-infection) since there are scarce data on this issue. HCV or HBV diagnosis preceded that of AIH in all patients by many years. At initial clinical and histological assessment almost half of patients had cirrhosis (45.5%) with the group of AIH and HCV carrying the highest frequency (4/5; 80%). In two thirds of patients, mostly with HCV and HBV/HDV, AIH was assumed to be IFNalpha-induced and experienced difficulties in achieving sustained virological response. On the contrary, the outcome of patients with HBV and AIH was better compared to those with AIH and HCV or HDV. In conclusion, chronic viral hepatitis infections concomitant with AIH are often very difficult to recognize and therefore, a significant delay in AIH diagnosis in this specific group of patients is usual. HBV patients with concomitant AIH seem to carry the most favorable outcome compared to those with HCV probably because of the use of nucleos(t)ide analogues which contrary to IFN-alpha can control HBV replication with no adjacent effect, related to exacerbation of autoimmune phenomena.