Saito I, Miyamura T, Ohbayashi A, Harada H, Katayama T, Kikuchi S, Watanabe Y, Koi S, Onji M, Ohta Y
Department of Enteroviruses, National Institute of Health, Tokyo, Japan.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1990 Sep;87(17):6547-9. doi: 10.1073/pnas.87.17.6547.
A possible causative role for the recently discovered hepatitis C virus (HCV) in the development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) was investigated by assay of sera from HCC patients in Japan for antibodies to a recombinant HCV antigen and to hepatitis B virus (HBV) antigens. Among the 253 HCC patients examined, 156 (61.7%) had no serum markers of either a previous or a current HBV infection (group I), 46 (18.2%) were negative for HBV surface antigen but positive for anti-HBV surface and/or anti-HBV core antibody, indicating the occurrence of a previous, transient HBV infection (group II), and 51 (20.2%) were chronically infected HBV carriers as evidenced by positivity for HBV surface antigen (group III). The prevalence of HCV antibody in group I (68.6%) and II (58.7%) patients was significantly higher than for group III (3.9%) or in 148 additional patients with other (non-HCC) cancers (10.1%) (P less than 0.01). Thus, there appears to be a strong association between HCV infection and the development of HCC, particularly in patients for which HBV infection cannot be implicated as a causative factor. The data also suggest an additional mode of transmission for HCV other than blood transfusion, since a history of blood transfusion was shown in only about 30% of the HCV antibody-positive HCC patients in groups I and II. A high prevalence of HCV antibody was also shown among patients with HCC whose disease was originally thought to be due to very high ethanol consumption.
通过检测日本肝癌患者血清中针对重组丙型肝炎病毒（HCV）抗原和乙型肝炎病毒（HBV）抗原的抗体，研究了最近发现的HCV在肝细胞癌（HCC）发生中的可能致病作用。在253例接受检查的HCC患者中，156例（61.7%）既没有既往或当前HBV感染的血清标志物（I组），46例（18.2%）HBV表面抗原阴性，但抗HBV表面和/或抗HBV核心抗体阳性，表明既往曾发生短暂性HBV感染（II组），51例（20.2%）为慢性HBV携带者，HBV表面抗原阳性可资证明（III组）。I组（68.6%）和II组（58.7%）患者中HCV抗体的流行率显著高于III组（3.9%）或另外148例患有其他（非HCC）癌症的患者（10.1%）（P<0.01）。因此，HCV感染与HCC的发生之间似乎存在密切关联，尤其是在不能将HBV感染作为致病因素的患者中。数据还提示，除输血外，HCV存在另一种传播方式，因为在I组和II组中，仅约30%的HCV抗体阳性HCC患者有输血史。在最初认为其疾病是由于大量饮酒所致的HCC患者中，HCV抗体的流行率也很高。
