Metabolic Alterations in Patients with Chronic Hepatitis C Infection in Tripoli, Libya

Abstract

Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) infection is associated with extra-hepatic manifestations, which are sometimes more
serious than the viral hepatic disease itself. It is well recognized in many studies that chronic hepatitis C infection
is related to hypolipidemia and type II diabetes. In Libya, literature has failed to show any previous studies on this
subject and herein, our study aimed to investigate these metabolic alterations in chronically infected hepatitis C
-patients. Between January 2011 and March 2012, we compared a group of 100 patients with chronic hepatitis C
with another group of 100 patients with dermatological diseases and who were negative for HCV. Both groups were
matched for age and sex, but confounding factors were excluded. The means of fasting serum cholesterol (CHOL),
low density lipoprotein (LDL), very low density lipoprotein (VLDL), high density lipoprotein (HDL), triglyceride
(TG), fasting blood sugar (FBS) and body mass index (BMI) were compared among both groups. In our study we
found that the means were less among infected subjects in the level of CHOL, TG, LDL and VLDL, but were higher
for HDL and FBS. These differences were statistically significant for TG (P = 0.001), LDL (P = 0.007), VLDL (P
= 0.001), HDL (P = 0.001) and FBS (P = 0.005); however, they were not significant for CHOL level (P = 0.309).
When the data were reanalyzed after excluding diabetic patients, we got the same results for total lipid profile
(TLP), but for FBS the difference was not statistically significant (P = 0.2). Our study concluded that chronic HCV
infection was associated with alterations in lipid metabolism and diabetes militias (DM) among Libyan patients.