Aim of the study:

The aim of the study was to characterize the population with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and steatotic liver disease (SLD) in comparison to the non-SLD HCV-infected patients and to evaluate the effectiveness of treatment with direct-acting antivirals (DAA).

Material and methods:

The analysis included 62 patients diagnosed with SLD and 14,284 non-SLD patients from the EpiTer-2 database for the period 2015-2022.

Results:

Unlike the non-SLD population, the SLD group was dominated by men (49.5% vs. 53.2%, respectively). The mean age of patients did not differ significantly between groups and was 50.8 ±13.8 and 50.8 ±14.9 years for SLD and non-SLD, respectively. As expected, patients with SLD had significantly different BMI values. Genotype (GT) 1b infection predominated in both populations, but the prevalence of GT3 was significantly higher in the SLD group (19.4% vs. 10.6%). The percentage of patients with advanced liver disease (F3/4) was similar in both groups (38.7% vs. 35.6%). Patients with SLD were more likely to be treatment naïve (82.3% vs. 80.5%), HBV co-infected (24.2% vs. 13.6%), and obese (54.8% vs. 17.1%). Out of 62 patients, 59 (95%) achieved a sustained virologic response (SVR), but after excluding 3 lost to follow-up a response rate of 100% was obtained. The corresponding SVR values in the non-SLD HCV-infected population were 95% and 98%, respectively.

Conclusions:

Despite some differences in the characteristics of patients with SLD infected with HCV, the effectiveness of DAA therapy does not differ significantly from that observed in the general population infected with HCV.