Antiviral therapy and long-term outcome for hepatitis B virus-related hepatocellular carcinoma after curative liver resection in a Japanese cohort

Abstract

Aim: The aim of this study was to determine whether antiviral therapy with nucleotide/nucleoside analog (NA) is beneficial for Japanese patients with hepatitis B virus (HBV)-related hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) who underwent initial curative liver resection.

Patients and methods: In 162 patients with positive hepatitis B surface antigen and negative anti-hepatitis C virus antibody, sixty-two patients received antiviral therapy with NA (NA group) and the remaining 100 patients did not (non-NA group). Prognostic factors for disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) were evaluated. Moreover, to equalize the background covariates, a one-to-one propensity case-matched analysis was used.

Results: NA administered were lamivudine (LAM) solely for 21 patients, LAM plus adefovir dipivoxil (ADV) for 6, LAM switched to entecavir (ETV) for 5 and ETV solely for 31. DFS did not significantly differ between the NA group and non-NA group (p=0.19). However, OS was significantly different (p=0.0063); 1-,3- and 5-year OS were 100% and 85.9%, 88.3% and 61.9% and 65.1% and 58.0%, respectively. In multivariate analysis, no antiviral therapy with NA was an independent poor prognostic factor (hazard ratio (HR)=2.72; p=0.0229). However, after propensity case-matched analysis, disease-free and overall survival were not significantly different between the two groups.

Conclusion: In a Japanese cohort, antiviral therapy with NAs might provide longer survival for postoperative HBV-related HCC patients compared to patients without antiviral therapy. However, deterministic evaluation was impossible by this study alone.

Keywords: Hepatitis B virus; antiviral therapy; hepatocellular carcinoma; nucleotide/nucleoside analog; propensity score-matching.