Kidney Cancer Linked to Chronic Hepatitis in the Asia-Pacific: A Population-Based Analysis

The association of renal cancer with viral hepatitis infection remains unclear. Using an insurance data set, this population-based case-control study evaluated the association of renal cancer with chronic hepatitis virus infection in an endemic area of hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection.

We enrolled 17,747 patients with renal cancer during the period from 2000 to 2011 from the National Health Insurance Research Database of Taiwan. The control group comprised 35,494 randomly selected people without renal cancer matched by age and gender to the patients in the study group. ORs were calculated to assess the association of chronic hepatitis virus infection with renal cancer by using logistic regression analysis.

Renal cancer was associated with HBV and HCV infection (OR 1.38, 95% CI 1.24-1.54; OR 1.24, 95% CI 1.07-1.44, respectively). An analysis stratified by gender and age revealed that young male HBV carriers had a higher risk of renal cancer compared with men without viral hepatitis (age <55 years: OR 1.94, 95% CI 1.57-2.39; 55≤ age <64 years: OR 1.40, 95% CI 1.05-1.86). Male HCV-infected patients aged <55 years (OR 1.90, 95% CI 1.11-3.26) and female HCV carriers aged between 55 and 64 years (OR 1.59, 95% CI 1.00-2.53) had a significantly higher risk of renal cancer compared with their counterparts.

Renal cancer is significantly associated with chronic hepatitis infection, particularly in younger HBV-infected men.