Different natural courses of chronic hepatitis B with genotypes B and C after the fourth decade of life

Figure 1 Age-specific HBeAg status at entry in the study in chronic hepatitis type B (CH-B)-infected patients with genotype B or C. Black box, HBeAg-positive patients; gray box, HBeAg-negative patients. Among the ≥ 30 yr old group, there are significantly more HBeAg-negative patients of genotype B than those of genotype C. In contrast, there are more HBeAg-positive patients in both groups, among the < 30 yr old group.

Figure 2 Comparison of cumulative probabilities of cirrhosis development between patients of genotypes B and C in the < 30 yr old group (P = 0. 48, log-rank test). Multivariate analysis identified no significant predictors.

Figure 3 Comparison of cumulative probabilities of cirrhosis development between patients with genotypes B and C in the ≥ 30 yr old group (P = 0. 002; log-rank test). A Cox proportional hazards analysis also indicated that genotype C was the only significant predictor (relative risk 5.75; 95% confidence intervals: 0.033-0.916, P = 0.039).