Seropositivity for anti-HCV core antigen is independently associated with increased all-cause, cardiovascular, and liver disease-related mortality in hemodialysis patients.

backgroundIt is not known whether chronic or past hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection contributes to the high mortality rate in hemodialysis patients.

methodsThis prospective study of 1077 adult hemodialysis patients without hepatitis B virus infection used Poisson regression analysis to estimate crude and sex- and age-adjusted rates (per 1000 patient-years) of all-cause, cardiovascular, infectious disease-related and liver disease-related mortality in patients negative for HCV antibody (group A), patients positive for HCV antibody and negative for anti-HCV core antigen (group B), and patients positive for anti-HCV core antigen (group C). The relative risks (RRs) for each cause of death in group B vs group C as compared with those in group A were also estimated by Poisson regression analysis after multivariate adjustment.

resultsA total of 407 patients died during the 5-year observation period. The sex- and age-adjusted mortality rate was 71.9 in group A, 80.4 in group B, and 156 in group C. The RRs (95% CI) for death in group B vs group C were 1.23 (0.72 to 2.12) vs 1.60 (1.13 to 2.28) for all-cause death, 0.75 (0.28 to 2.02) vs 1.64 (0.98 to 2.73) for cardiovascular death, 1.64 (0.65 to 4.15) vs 1.58 (0.81 to 3.07) for infectious disease-related death, and 15.3 (1.26 to 186) vs 28.8 (3.75 to 221) for liver disease-related death, respectively.

conclusionsAnti-HCV core antigen seropositivity independently contributes to elevated risks of all-cause and cause-specific death. Chronic HCV infection, but not past HCV infection, is a risk for death among hemodialysis patients.