Clinical and Translational Research
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Hepatol. Sep 27, 2021; 13(9): 1167-1180
Published online Sep 27, 2021. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v13.i9.1167
Development of a risk score to guide targeted hepatitis C testing among human immunodeficiency virus patients in Cambodia
Anja De Weggheleire, Jozefien Buyze, Sokkab An, Sopheak Thai, Johan van Griensven, Sven Francque, Lutgarde Lynen
Anja De Weggheleire, Jozefien Buyze, Johan van Griensven, Lutgarde Lynen, Department of Clinical Sciences, Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp, Antwerp 2000, Belgium
Sokkab An, Sopheak Thai, Infectious Diseases Department, Sihanouk Hospital Center of Hope, Phnom Penh 12101, Cambodia
Sven Francque, Department of Gastroenterology Hepatology, Antwerp University Hospital, Antwerp 2000, Belgium
Sven Francque, Laboratory of Experimental Medicine and Paediatrics, University of Antwerp, Antwerp 2000, Belgium
Author contributions: De Weggheleire A designed and coordinated the study, and drafted the initial manuscript; An S and Thai S participated in the acquisition and review of the data; Buyze J reviewed the statistical analysis plan and data analysis; van Griensven J, Francque S and Lynen L reviewed the study design and analysis plan; Lynen L was the guarantor of the study; all authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp (Approval No. IRB 925/14), the Ethics Committee of the Antwerp University Hospital (Belgium) (Approval No. 14/39/405), and the Cambodian National Ethics Committee for Health Research (Approval No. 0309).
Clinical trial registration statement: This study was registered in ClinicalTrials.gov, identifier NCT02361541.
Informed consent statement: Written informed consent was provided for all participants.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Data sharing statement: The data underlying this study are available upon request because the applied informed consent did not inform participants about the possibility of non-restricted data sharing. Data are available from the corresponding author (adeweggheleire@itg.be) for researchers who meet the criteria for access to confidential anonymized data.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Anja De Weggheleire, MD, MSc, Doctor, Senior Researcher, Department of Clinical Sciences, Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp, Nationalestraat 155, Antwerp 2000, Belgium. adeweggheleire@itg.be
Received: April 25, 2021
Peer-review started: April 25, 2021
First decision: June 4, 2021
Revised: June 27, 2021
Accepted: August 24, 2021
Article in press: August 24, 2021
Published online: September 27, 2021
Processing time: 149 Days and 17.7 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: We developed and internally validated a clinical prediction score to stratify human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) patients for risk of hepatitis C (HCV) coinfection, and derived a decision rule to guide prioritization of HCV testing. The score incorporates readily available clinical and laboratory predictors, and had, in the Cambodian derivation cohort, a good ability to discriminate between HCV/HIV coinfection and HIV mono-infection. Key populations were rare in the Cambodian HIV cohort.