[A study on hepatic iron overload in chronic hepatitis C patients]

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.

To assess the association between hepatic iron overload and fibrosis stage grades in hepatitis C Virus carriers, hepatic steatosis and demographic variables.

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.

Severe fibrosis was statistically associated with older age, iron overload presence (P = 0.003) and steatosis (P = 0.01).

In this study hepatic iron overload and hepatic steatosis were associated with severe hepatic fibrosis (METAVIR F3-F4).