Psychological impact of chronic hepatitis C: Comparison with other stressful life events and chronic diseases

Figure 1 (A) Comparison between mean visual analogue scale (VAS) scores for chronic hepatitis C (CHC) diagnosis-related stress and four other stressful life events (i. e., home removal, job dismissal, divorce, and death of a loved-one) selected from the Paykel life-event scale[23] in the 185 patients. P values are for post-hoc comparisons made after significant one-way ANOVA (F = 249.32, P < 0.0001). (B) Comparison between mean visual analogue scale (VAS) scores for perceived chronic hepatitis (CHC) severity and four other common chronic diseases carrying a risk of life-threatening complications (i.e., hypertension, diabetes, cancer and AIDS) in the subgroup of 185 patients. P values are for post-hoc comparisons made after significant one-way ANOVA (F = 173.81, P < 0.001). (C) Mean visual analogue scale (VAS) scores for perceived chronic hepatitis (CHC) severity according to actual severity of liver disease assessed using METAVIR fibrosis score (F0: no fibrosis; F1: portal fibrosis without septa; F2: portal fibrosis and few septa; F3: numerous septa without cirrhosis; F4: cirrhosis) in the 169 patients with available liver specimen. In Figures A, B and C, the upper and lower limits of the boxes and the middle square indicate the standard error and the mean, respectively. The upper and lower horizontal bars indicate the standard deviation.