Nardelli S, Riggio O, Rosati D, Gioia S, Farcomeni A, Ridola L. Hepatitis C virus eradication with directly acting antivirals improves health-related quality of life and psychological symptoms. World J Gastroenterol 2019; 25(48): 6928-6938 [PMID: 31908396 DOI: 10.3748/wjg.v25.i48.6928]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Lorenzo Ridola, MD, PhD, Doctor, Department of Translational and Precision Medicine, “Sapienza” University of Rome, viale dell’Università 37, Rome 00185, Italy. lorenzo.ridola@uniroma1.it
Research Domain of This Article
Gastroenterology & Hepatology
Article-Type of This Article
Observational Study
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (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/
Silvia Nardelli, Oliviero Riggio, Davide Rosati, Stefania Gioia, Lorenzo Ridola, Department of Translational and Precision Medicine, “Sapienza” University of Rome, Rome 00185, Italy
Alessio Farcomeni, Department of Economics & Finance, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Rome 00185, Italy
Author contributions: Nardelli S and Ridola L drafted the article; Nardelli S, Riggio O and Ridola L contributed to critical revision of the article for important intellectual content; Gioia S and Rosati D contributed to acquisition of data; Nardelli S contributed to conception and design; Farcomeni A performed statistical analysis; Riggio O and Ridola L contributed to final approval of the article.
Institutional review board statement: This study protocol was reviewed and approved by the the Ethical and the Research Committees of the “Sapienza” University of Rome.
Informed consent statement: All study participants or their legal guardian provided informed written consent about personal and medical data collection prior to study enrolment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: S.N. was the winner of a competitive Gilead Fellowship Program 2017 for this project, all the other authors have nothing to disclose and no conflict of interest.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement-checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (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: Lorenzo Ridola, MD, PhD, Doctor, Department of Translational and Precision Medicine, “Sapienza” University of Rome, viale dell’Università 37, Rome 00185, Italy. lorenzo.ridola@uniroma1.it
Telephone: +39-773-6556155
Received: October 21, 2019 Peer-review started: October 21, 2019 First decision: November 9, 2019 Revised: December 13, 2019 Accepted: December 22, 2019 Article in press: December 22, 2019 Published online: December 28, 2019 Processing time: 68 Days and 1.2 Hours
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background
In patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, alterations in health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and neuropsychological disturbances were described also in the absence of liver cirrhosis.
Research motivation
During the last years, HCV therapy has evolved from interferon-based to directly acting antiviral (DAA)-based therapy, with excellent tolerability and efficacy.
Research objectives
No data exists on the modifications of neuropsychological symptoms before and after DAAs treatment and on the relationship of these symptoms on HRQoL.
Research methods
All patients included in the study underwent a neuropsychological assessment, including Zung-Self Depression-Rating-Scale, Spielberg State-Trait Anxiety Inventory Y1-Y2 and the Toronto-Alexithymia Scale-20 items before and after DAAs treatment. HRQoL was detected by Short-Form-36.
Research results
In this study we demonstrated for the first time that HCV eradication strongly improves depression, anxiety and alexithymia symptoms and HRQoL.
Research conclusions
HCV eradication is important non only in patients with liver cirrhosis, but also in patients with chornic hepatitis because significantly improves health related quality of life and neuropsychological symptoms.
Research perspective
Further studies are needed to confirm improvements in HRQoL and neuropsychological symptoms even after years of DAAs treatment.
