TOPLINE:

Patients with untreated chronic hepatitis B who had metabolic comorbidities were at a higher risk for advanced liver fibrosis and were less likely to see improvement with antiviral therapy than those without such comorbidities.

METHODOLOGY:

Researchers investigated the association between the presence of concurrent metabolic comorbidities and the severity of liver fibrosis in 3179 patients with untreated chronic hepatitis B (median age, 37 years; 72.2% men) using data from two tertiary clinics in the Netherlands and Canada and six global clinical trials.

All patients underwent an initial liver biopsy, and 1307 of the patients enrolled in the clinical trials underwent a second biopsy 48-72 weeks after starting antiviral therapy. Biopsies were analyzed by experienced pathologist

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