High viral load is associated with poor overall and recurrence-free survival of hepatitis B virus-related hepatocellular carcinoma after curative resection: A prospective cohort study

Postoperative adjuvant arterial chemoembolization improves the survival of hepatitis B virus-related hepatocellular carcinoma: a retrospective control study

“…The pretreatment variables were chosen on the basis of our own clinical experience or on the basis of possible effects on prognosis as indicated in previous studies [7,9,26,27]. Host-related variables include age, gender (male or female), serum total bilirubin, serum alanine transaminase (ALT), serum aspartate aminotransferase (AST), serum AFP, serum hemoglobin, serum hepatitis B surface antigen (HBeAg) (positive or negative), peripheral blood Tregs, ascites (positive or negative), arteriovenous fistula, cirrhosis (positive or negative), and peripheral blood HBV DNA load.…”

“…Lai et al [4] concluded that HBV was closely linked to HCC, because integrated HBV fragments were frequently detected in the tumors of patients with positive hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg). High HBV DNA load has often been reported to have a correlation with high postoperative recurrence [5][6][7], but its impact on postoperative survival remains uncertain [5,8,9]. It is important to ensure a high validity of HBV DNA for the assessment for postoperative HCC prognosis to provide a strong foundation for the use of antiviral therapy in the prevention of HCC recurrence.…”

Efficacy of antiviral therapy with nucleotide/nucleoside analogs after curative treatment for patients with hepatitis B virus-related hepatocellular carcinoma: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Furthermore, 8 out of 19 potentially remaining relevant trials were excluded from the systematic review after the full text was read: two studies involved other antiviral drugs, such as interferon or thymosin alpha 1 [18,19]; two studies did not exclude the patients who used NA before curative treatment [20,21]; one study referred to non-curative treatment with trans-arterial chemoembolization [22]; and three studies did not reveal sufficient data of the outcome to perform analysis [23][24][25]. Finally, twelve trials from eleven references [12,[26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35] (two trials were reported in one reference) involving 6682 patients were included in the study (one RCT [34], seven retrospective cohort studies [26][27][28]30,32,33,35], and four prospective cohort studies [12,29,31,34]). Among the included studies, 1332 patients were in the treatment group (received NA after curative treatment) and 5350 were in the control group (received no antiviral therapy after curative treatment).…”

“…As such, an adjuvant treatment that can reduce recurrence or improve survival of patients with HBV-related HCC after curative treatment should be developed. Evidence has further shown that high serum HBV DNA level is a risk factor of HCC and nucleotide/nucleoside analog (NA) antiviral therapy can provide benefits for patients with HBV-related HCC after curative treatment [10][11][12]. NA can suppress the replication of HBV, slow down disease progression to cirrhosis, and subsequently reduce the incidence of de novo tumors after curative treatment [13,14].…”

Viral hepatitis and hepatocellular carcinoma: etiology and management

“…Similarly, as described above, higher preoperative viral loads are associated with worse overall and recurrence free survivals after curative resection (60).…”