Follow-up results of HCV GT2 patients after sofosbuvir/ribavirin therapy: Careful attention to occurrence of HCC

Background: We examined treatment the efficacy and data on long-term outcomes in real-world Japanese patients infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype 2 treated with 12-week sofosbuvir/ribavirin combination therapy. Patients and Methods: In a total of 86 patients who were treated with sofosbuvir/ribavirin, sustained virological response (SVR) rates and long-term-outcomes were retrospectively analyzed. Results: The adherence to this combination therapy was 98.8%. The rates of SVR at week 24 (SVR24) achieved with this treatment according to the ‘intention-to-treat’and ‘per-protocol’ analyses were 89.5% and 96.2%, respectively. Two patients who experienced relapse did not have any previously reported resistance-associated substitutions in the HCV non-structural protein 5B (NS5B) polymerase region. We did not observe any patients who experienced late relapse but did observe that 50% and 1.3% of patients with and without a previous history of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), respectively, developed HCC after achieving SVR24 (with a mean follow-up period of 2.7±0.8 years). Conclusion: Patients with SVR should be carefully followed-up to screen for the occurrence of HCC, although it is infrequent.