Association Between Gut Flora and Response to Antiviral Therapy in Chronic Hepatitis C Patients

Article 5Volume 9, Issue 4, December 2019, Page 280-286 

Document Type: Original Article

DOI: 10.21608/AEJI.2019.57106

Authors

Reda Mohamed Salem El-Badawy1Mohammed El-Sayed El Shewi1Naglaa Fathy Ebrahim Al-Husseini2Rasha Abdel-Hameed El-Sayed Ali3Ebrahim Mohammedy Ebrahim Saleh Description: email 4

1Hepatology, Gastroenterology and Infectious Diseases Department, Faculty of Medicine, Benha University, Benha, Egypt.

2Medical Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department, Faculty of Medicine, Benha University,Benha, Egypt,

3Microbiology and Immunology Department, Faculty of Medicine, Benha University, Benha,

4Hepatology, Gastroenterology and Infectious Diseases Department, Mabaret El-Maadi Hospital, Cairo,Egypt.

Abstract

Background and study aim: Still there is percentage of HCV patients not responding to Direct Acting Antiviral Agents (DAAS), even the responder HCV patients need to follow up. Gut flora (Microbiota) include all the microorganisms in the intestine and liver can be greatly affected by changes in gut microbiota. The study was done to evaluate the association between gut flora and the response to DAAS in chronic HCV patients.
Methodology: Two groups; group 1 (No=15 of HCV responders patients) and group 2 (No=15 non responder HCV patients) treated by DAAS according to the treatment protocol of the Egyptian National Committee for Control of Viral Hepatitis (NCCVH). Healthy control subjects (No=15)age  and sex matched to the study groups as third group. All investigations were done plus stool culture using VITEK 2 KITS according to the manufacturer.
 
Results: The results show statistically significant difference between the patients (responders and non responders) and control, where p1 comparison between control and responders, p2 between control and non responders, p3 between responders and non responders. Enterobacter organism in p2, p3 was Clostridium perfringens in p2 was 0.009 and 0.04 respectively. Klebsiella organism in p1 and p2 was 0.04 and 0.01 respectively while Streptococci in p2 was 0.007.
Conclusion: Gut microbiota have a crucial role in HCV patients especially the non responders compared to the control even the responders need to be followed up to adjust the gut flora of them to the normal because this proved to play an important role in micro environmental changes that lead to hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

Keywords

Direct Acting Antivirals (DAAS)Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC)Hepatitis C Virus (HCV)

Main Subjects

Hepatology