HCV, HBV, HCC, NASH

Small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs) are a class of highly conserved, stable non-coding RNAs involved in both post-transcriptional modification of RNA and in ribosome biogenesis. Recent research shows that the dysfunction of snoRNAs plays a pivotal role in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and related etiologies, such as hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV), and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Growing evidence suggests that snoRNAs act as oncogenes or tumor suppressors in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) through multiple mechanisms...

Background and Objectives : Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common form of primary liver cancer with a highly unfavorable prognosis. Aims : Retrospective statistical analysis of patients with HCC in the field of liver cirrhosis treated at our center from the perspective of demography, and the effects of key changes in diagnostic and therapeutic procedures in the last 10 years on overall survival (OS) and earlier diagnosis. Materials and Methods : This study included 170 cirrhotic patients with HCC (136 men, 80%)...

Background: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a common cause of progressive hepatic fibrosis, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma worldwide. Despite the availability of effective direct-acting antivirals, patients often have significant hepatic fibrosis at the time of diagnosis due to delay in diagnosis and comorbidities which promote fibrogenesis. Thus, antifibrotic agents represent an attractive adjunctive therapy. Fuzheng Huayu (FZHY), a traditional Chinese medicine botanical formulation, has been used as an antifibrotic agent in chronic HBV infection...

BACKGROUND: Cirrhosis is the outcome of chronic liver disease of any etiology due to progressive liver injury and fibrosis. Consequently, cirrhosis leads to portal hypertension and liver dysfunction, progressing to complications like ascites, variceal bleeding, hepatic encephalopathy, hepatorenal syndrome, hepatopulmonary syndrome, cirrhotic cardiomyopathy, sarcopenia, hepatocellular carcinoma, and coagulation disorders. End-stage liver disease leads to an impaired quality of life, loss of social and economic productivity, and reduced survival...

Liver cancer epidemiology is changing due to increasing alcohol consumption, rising prevalence of obesity, and advances in hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatment. However, the impact of these changes on global liver cancer burden remains unclear. We estimated global and regional temporal trends in the burden of liver cancer and the contributions of various liver disease etiologies using the methodology framework of the Global Burden of Disease study. Between 2010 and 2019, there was a 25% increase in liver cancer deaths...

BACKGROUND: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a major complication of chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. Among haemophilic (H) men, HCV is the leading cause of liver disease. Direct-acting antiviral agents (DAA) reduce HCV viral load, but impact on HCC is unknown. METHODS: This was a retrospective study of adult H and nonhaemophilic (NH) male discharges, with and without HCC, identified by ICD-10 codes in the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) database, 2016-2018, with DAA availability...

Background and aims: Recently, there has been a considerable increase in patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Availability of high-efficacy drugs for hepatitis B and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection may have changed the disease prevalence. We aimed to study the impact of this changing epidemiology in patients undergoing liver transplantation (LT) over a 10-year period. Methods: The study population was stratified into Period 1 (2009-2014) and Period 2 (2015-2019)...

Aim of the study: To study the prevalence of risk factors for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in middle-aged (40-59 years) and elderly patients (≥60 years) with cryptogenic cirrhosis as compared to those with hepatitis B or C virus (HBV or HCV) related cirrhosis. Methods and materials: Between August 2013 and December 2014, cases (cryptogenic cirrhosis) and controls (HBV/HCV cirrhosis) above 40 years of age were prospectively recruited and assessed for the cause and prevalence of risk factors for NAFLD...

Lipids are a complex and diverse group of molecules with crucial roles in many physiological processes, as well as in the onset, progression, and maintenance of cancers. Fatty acids and cholesterol are the building blocks of lipids, orchestrating these crucial metabolic processes. In the liver, lipid alterations are prevalent as a cause and consequence of chronic hepatitis B and C virus infections, alcoholic hepatitis, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and steatohepatitis. Recent developments in lipidomics have also revealed that dynamic changes in triacylglycerols, phospholipids, sphingolipids, ceramides, fatty acids, and cholesterol are involved in the development and progression of primary liver cancer...

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the major causes of cancer-related death. Although the burden of alcohol- and NASH-related HCC is growing, chronic viral hepatitis (HBV and HCV) remains a major cause of HCC development worldwide. The pathophysiology of viral-related HCC includes liver inflammation, oxidative stress, and deregulation of cell signaling pathways. HBV is particularly oncogenic because, contrary to HCV, integrates in the cell DNA and persists despite virological suppression by nucleotide analogues...

Hepatocyte nuclear factor 4 alpha (HNF4α) is indispensable for hepatocyte differentiation and critical for maintaining liver health. Here we demonstrate that loss of HNF4α activity is crucial step in pathogenesis of chronic liver diseases that lead to development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). We developed a HNF4α target gene signature which can accurately determine HNF4α activity and performed an exhaustive in silico analysis using hierarchical and K-means clustering, survival and rank order analysis of 30 independent datasets containing over 3500 individual samples...

BACKGROUND: Recent increases in the number of patients with non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) warrant the identification of biomarkers for early detection of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) associated with NASH (NASH-HCC). IgM-free apoptosis inhibitor of macrophage (AIM), which generally associates with IgM in blood and exerts its biological function by dissociation from IgM, may serve as an effective biomarker for NASH-HCC. Here, we established a fully automatic and high-throughput electrochemiluminescence immunoassay (ECLIA) to measure IgM-free AIM and investigated its efficacy in diagnosing NASH-HCC and viral HCC...

The association between alcohol and liver disease, including alcoholic hepatitis, cirrhosis, acute-on-chronic liver failure, and hepatocellular carcinoma, has been well described, but the same cannot be said for the association between smoking, water pipe or tobacco chewing. A review of cumulative evidence suggests that smoking is independently a risk factor for liver fibrosis and contributes to carcinogenesis in HCC. Smoking-related fibrosis has been reported in patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, primary biliary cholangitis, alcoholic liver disease and chronic viral hepatitis...

Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has variable etiological risk factors. Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) and surgical resection (SR) are frequently used as curative treatment options. In the present study, we assessed the etiological factors and efficacy of RFA and SR in patients with unifocal HCC in a real-life setting. Methods: Of 870 patients with HCC seen over a period of nine years, 785 patients were assessed for stage and etiological risk factors. Of these, 110 (14%) patients with single HCC who were either treated with RFA (n = 72) or SR (n = 38) were evaluated for their outcomes in terms of overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) over 3 years...

BACKGROUND: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) treatment remains a big challenge in the field of oncology. The liver disease (viral or not viral) underlying HCC turned out to be crucial in determining the biologic behavior of the tumor, including its response to treatment. The aim of this analysis was to investigate the role of the etiology of the underlying liver disease in survival outcomes. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We conducted a multicenter retrospective study on a large cohort of patients treated with lenvatinib as first-line therapy for advanced HCC from both Eastern and Western institutions...

AIM: To investigate the therapeutic effect of lenvatinib (LEN) in liver disease etiology, especially nonviral hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). METHODS AND RESULTS: Sixty-seven patients with unresectable advanced HCC (u-HCC) treated with LEN and consisting of 26 hepatitis C virus (HCV), 19 hepatitis B virus (HBV), 11 alcohol, and 11 nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) cases were retrospectively recruited. Univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazard models were used to determine predictive factors for survival...

Metabolic derangement is characteristic in patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. Aside from established liver injury, various extrahepatic metabolic disorders impact the natural history of the disease, clinical outcomes, and the efficacy of antiviral therapy. The presence of steatosis, recently redefined as metabolic-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD), is a common feature in HCV-infected patients, induced by host and/or viral factors. Most chronic HCV-infected (CHC) patients have mild steatosis within the periportal region of the liver with an estimated prevalence of 40% to 86%...

BACKGROUND: Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis-associated hepatocellular carcinoma (NASH-HCC) is the second-leading cause of liver transplantation (LT) performed for HCC. Despite this, little is known about the clinical characteristics and outcomes of NASH-HCC. METHODS: Patients undergoing LT for HCC from 2001 to 2017 at a single center were reviewed. Outcomes of NASH-HCC (n = 51) were compared to other etiologies of HCC including hepatitis C (HCV) hepatitis B (HBV), and alcoholic liver disease (ALD)...

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) can be classified as a prototypical inflammation-driven cancer that generally arises from a background of liver cirrhosis, but that in the presence of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), could develop in the absence of fibrosis or cirrhosis. Tumor-promoting inflammation characterizes HCC pathogenesis, with an epidemiology of the chronic liver disease frequently encompassing hepatitis virus B (HBV) or C (HCV). HCC tumor onset and progression is a serial and heterogeneous process in which intrinsic factors, such as genetic mutations and chromosomal instability, are closely associated with an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME), which may have features associated with the etiopathogenesis and expression of the viral antigens, which favor the evasion of tumor neoantigens to immune surveillance...

INTRODUCTION AND AIMS: Even though the term hepatocellular carcinoma designates the most common type of primary liver cancer, the disease has a high level of heterogeneity due to its etiology, geographic variation, behavior, and association with specific genetic alterations. The aim of the present study was to establish, through a cluster analysis, the clinical characteristics that enable homogeneous conglomerates to be defined. MATERIALS AND METHODS: An exploratory cluster analysis was developed utilizing the K-means method for sub-classifying 119 cases of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma...