Abstract
This study aims to estimate the prevalence of insulin resistance (IR) among chronic hepatitis C (CHC) patients and their related laboratory and demographic data. In this study, non-diabetic CHC patients referred to Viral Hepatitis Ambulatories from Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) donated blood samples. Insulin was measured using a chemiluminescence immunoassay. IR was determined by HOMA-IR, where HOMA-IR > 2 was defined as IR. A total of 214 CHC patients were recruited (123 females aged 53.6 years ± 10.9 years). IR was present in 133 patients (62.1%) and was associated in bivariate analysis to higher mean values of age (p = 0.040), triglycerides (p = 0.032), glucose (p = 0.000), insulin (p = 0.000), waist circumference (p = 0.001), and body mass index (p = 0.007); however, none of these variables were significant in the multivariate analysis. The high prevalence of IR was observed among CHC patients, and there was no difference in clinical or laboratory parameters when both groups were compared in the multivariate analysis. This high IR prevalence could lead to a high risk for development of cardiovascular disease and metabolic disorders.
Highlights
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a major cause of chronic liver disease, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma and is responsible for chronically infecting approximately 130 million people worldwide [1]
HCV infection has been related to extra-hepatic manifestations, such as diabetes and insulin resistance (IR)
The present study demonstrated a high prevalence of IR (62.1%) compared to previous studies conducted in Europe (42-46%) [7,17], North America (40%) [18], Asia (51%) [8] and Brazil (53% and 61%) [9,15]
Summary
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a major cause of chronic liver disease, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma and is responsible for chronically infecting approximately 130 million people worldwide [1]. Several direct-acting antiviral agents (DAAs) were developed for the treatment of HCV infection [4], but DAAs are not widely available in low resource areas In these regions, Peg-IFN and ribavirin (RBV) are used for antiviral therapy and result in a sustained virological response (SVR) of approximately. IR was associated with age, waist circumference, body mass index (BMI), advanced liver fibrosis [10], HCV viral load [14], higher mean degree of steatosis [15] and higher serum levels of oxidative stress [10,11]. The present study was conducted to determine the prevalence of IR and related demographic and laboratory data among chronic HCV patients referred to hepatology units from Southeast Brazil. All data were entered and analysed in SPSS version 20.0
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