The effect of retreatment with interferon‐α on the incidence of hepatocellular carcinoma in patients with chronic hepatitis C

BACKGROUND Interferon (IFN) has been reported to have beneficial long term effects that reduce the occurrence of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), even in patients who do not have complete responses to IFN. The authors evaluated the effect of retreatment with IFN-α on the long term prognoses of those with incomplete responses to their initial IFN-α treatment. METHODS Among 271 patients with incomplete responses to initial IFN-α treatment who had received sufficient dose and duration (a total dose of more than 350 megaunits administered over a period longer than 12 weeks) between October 1989 and September 1997, 63 patients received retreatment and 208 did not. The authors retrospectively compared the incidence of HCC between patients who received retreatment and those who did not. RESULTS There were no significant differences in the clinical characteristics between these two groups. The cumulative incidence of HCC was significantly lower among the patients who had retreatment, and retreatment with IFN-α was the only factor that correlated with the lower incidence of HCC in multivariate analysis. The results were similar when the 12 patients with complete responses to retreatment were excluded from the analysis. CONCLUSIONS Retreatment with IFN-α appeared to have the additional effect of suppressing the development of HCC in patients who had incomplete responses to the initial treatment, even when the hepatitis C virus was not cleared (i.e., a complete response was not achieved) with retreatment. Further prospective study is required. Cancer 2000;88:58–65. © 2000 American Cancer Society.