Advancing metabolic risk profiling in chronic hepatitis B: Reply to correspondence on “Metabolic health in antiviral era of chronic hepatitis B” Shang-Chin Huang, Jia-Horng Kao Clinical and Molecular Hepatology.2026; 32(1): e117. CrossRef
Background/Aims Given the increase in prevalence of metabolic diseases, we investigated their long-term impacts on the outcomes of chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients receiving nucleos(t)ide analogue (NA) treatment.
Methods We analyzed data from CHB patients for whom initiated NA treatment from 30 centers. We balanced patient characteristics with and without metabolic disease (diabetes, obesity, dyslipidemia, and hypertension) via propensity-score matching (PSM) to evaluate adverse outcomes.
Results The study included 4,500 patients. PSM yielded 909 pairs of patients with balanced characteristics. When stratified by the number of metabolic diseases, only patients with ≥2 metabolic diseases had an increased cumulative incidence of cirrhosis and overall death. However, when stratified by the presence of diabetes (regardless of the presence or number of other metabolic diseases), patients with diabetes (versus those without) had a significantly higher cumulative incidence of all outcomes: cirrhosis (P=0.009), hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC, P=0.023), and overall, liver-related, and non-liver-related death (P<0.001, P=0.026 and P<0.001, respectively). Having ≥2 metabolic diseases was associated with cirrhosis, overall death, and non-liver-related death but not HCC or liver-related death, while diabetes was significantly associated with a higher risk of all outcomes: cirrhosis (hazard ratio [HR]=3.75, P=0.004), HCC (HR=2.02, P=0.020), and overall, liver-related, and non-liver-related death (HR=2.53, P<0.001; HR=2.65, P=0.016; HR=2.38, P<0.001).
Conclusions Having two or more metabolic diseases was associated with a higher risk of cirrhosis, overall death, and non-liver-related death, but having diabetes as a single metabolic disease was significantly associated with all adverse outcomes including cirrhosis, HCC, and overall, liver-related, and non-liver-related death.
Citations
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