Systematic Evaluation And Meta-analysis Of The Incidence Of Liver Cancer In Patients With Hepatitis C Treated With Interferon And Direct Antiviral Drugs

Objective: Systemic and meta-analyses were used to compare the incidence of liver cancer(HCC)in patients treated with interferon(IFN)and direct antiviral drugs(DAA)for the treatment of viral hepatitis C(HCV)and sustained virological response(SVR).Methods: A literature search was conducted on PubMed,Embase and the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure(CNKI)databases for studies from inception to January,2019.Studies quality was assessed using Newcastle-Ottawa Scale(NOS)and 95% confidence intervals(CIs)as the effect measures.The data analysis was performed using Stata software.Results: A total of 21 studies(n=42978 patients,IFN=19626,DAA=23352)were included.In these studies,occurrence rate of HCC was 25.80/1000 person-years(py)(95% CI 16.96-34.64;P≤0.001)in IFN and 67.69/1000 py(95% CI 38.81-96.58;P≤0.001)in DAA studies.Conclusions: This study provide evidence that achieving SVR after IFN-based therapy leads to a lower risk of HCC occurrence than DAA.