Association of Caffeine Intake and Liver Fibrosis in Patients With Chronic Hepatitis C

Abstract

-Background -Caffeine consumption has been associated to decreased levels of liver enzymes and lower risk of fibrosis in patients with hepatitis C virus. Objectives -This study aimed to evaluate the association between caffeine consumption and inflammatory activity or degree of liver fibrosis in patients with hepatitis C virus infection. Methods -A cross-sectional study of patients with chronic hepatitis C virus infection treated in an outpatient Gastroenterology Unit of Santa Casa Hospital (Porto Alegre -Brasil).Patients were interviewed regarding the consumption of caffeine and anthropometric assessment was performed. Liver biopsy was performed in a maximum period of 36 months before inclusion in the study. Results -There were 113 patients, 67 (59.3%) females, 48 (42.5%) were aged between 52 and 62 years, and 101 (89.4%) were white. The average caffeine consumption was 251.41 ± 232.32 mg/day, and 70 (62%) patients consumed up to 250 mg/day of caffeine. There was no association between caffeine consumption and inflammatory activity on liver biopsy. On the other hand, when evaluating the caffeine consumption liver fibrosis an inverse association was observed. Conclusions -The greater consumption of caffeine was associated with lower liver fibrosis. There was no association between caffeine consumption and inflammatory activity. HEADINGS -Caffeine. Chronic hepatitis C. Liver cirrhosis.

Effects of caffeine consumption in patients with chronic hepatitis C: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Thirty articles underwent full-length review, of which 19 articles were excluded because they were not related to hepatitis C (12 articles), did not have controls or comparison of high versus low caffeine intake (5 articles), was a letter to the editor (1 article), or was an abstract (1 article). Eleven studies were included in the qualitative analysis [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26], and five studies were included in the meta-analysis [17,[21][22][23][24]. Fig.…”

“…Five observational studies (all cross-sectional studies) involving 1507 participants were included in the data Modi et al [23] Costentin et al [17] Machado et al [22] Khalaf et al [21] Oliveira et al [ analysis for the risk of advanced hepatic fibrosis [17,[21][22][23][24]. The pooled OR of advanced hepatic fibrosis in patients who had higher caffeine intake was 0.39 (95% CI: 0.21-0.72) (Fig.…”

“…The liver fibrosis staging scale used to quantify the degree of liver fibrosis varied among studies. The METAVIR scoring system was used in four studies [17,21,22,24], and the Ishak score was used in one study [23]. Hepatic fibrosis was evaluated by liver biopsy in four studies [17,[22][23][24], and by the FibroSURE (BioPredictive, Paris, France) test in one study [21].…”

“…The definition of advanced hepatic fibrosis was a fibrosis score ≥ 3 using the METAVIR scoring system or ≥ 3 for the Ishak scoring system. For the two studies [17,24] that did not indicate the definition of advanced hepatic fibrosis, we used a fibrosis score of ≥ 3 according to the guidelines of the American Association of the Study of Liver Diseases and Infectious Disease Society of America [11].…”

25 years of Hepatitis C

“…In this special issue of the Archives of Gastroenterology, we have another interesting article on hepatitis C addressing the beneficial effects of caffeine in the evolution of this liver disease (26) . It has long been aware of the beneficial effects of coffee on serum liver enzymes and the alcoholic liver disease, but since 2009 several studies have shown that caffeine intake, especially in the form of coffee, has a protective effect on the development of hepatitis C virus (12,14,21,22) .…”