Screening and prevention of hepatitis C virus reactivation during chemotherapy

Table 2 Incidence of hepatitis C virus-related hepatitis flare in cancer patients receiving chemotherapy

Ref.	Study type	Cancer type	Results
Torres et al[18]	Prospective observation study	Hematological tumor (n = 50)	A hepatitis flare occurred in 10% of HCV-infected cancer patients receiving chemotherapy
		Non-HCC solid tumor (n = 50)	Definition of HCV-related hepatitis flare: unexplained increase in ALT to 3 times the upper limit of normal and increase in HCV-RNA level of ≥ 1 log10 IU/mL over baseline
Li et al[4]	Retrospective observation study	Hematological tumor (n = 569); HCC (n = 256); Non-HCC solid tumor (n = 3900)	The incidence of severe acute liver injury in HCV-infected hematological cancer patients was higher than that in those with HCC patients and non-HCC solid tumor patients (9.4% vs 1.9 % and 1.1%, respectively). Definition of severe acute liver injury: ALT increased beyond 10 times the upper limit of normal during chemotherapy or 6 months following chemotherapy
Tomizawa et al[28]	Retrospective observation study	Colorectal cancer (n = 24)	The incidence of severe acute exacerbation rate in HCV-infected patients was 8%. Definition of severe acute exacerbation: ALT increased beyond 5 times the upper limit of normal
Hsu et al[22]	Retrospective observation study	Hematological tumor (n = 104); Solid tumor (n = 204)	The incidence of HCV acute exacerbation was 11% (hematological tumor: 23%; solid tumor: 4.4%). Definition of HCV acute exacerbation: 3-fold or greater increase in serum ALT level

HCV: Hepatitis C virus; HCC: Hepatocellular carcinoma; ALT: Alanine aminotransferase.