Published in:
Open Access
01-03-2020 | Hepatitis B | Original Article—Liver, Pancreas, and Biliary Tract
Transition in the etiology of liver cirrhosis in Japan: a nationwide survey
Authors:
Hirayuki Enomoto, Yoshiyuki Ueno, Yoichi Hiasa, Hiroki Nishikawa, Shuhei Hige, Yasuhiro Takikawa, Makiko Taniai, Toru Ishikawa, Kohichiroh Yasui, Akinobu Takaki, Koichi Takaguchi, Akio Ido, Masayuki Kurosaki, Tatsuya Kanto, Shuhei Nishiguchi, Japan Etiology of Liver Cirrhosis Study Group in the 54th Annual Meeting of JSH
Published in:
Journal of Gastroenterology
|
Issue 3/2020
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Abstract
Background
To assess the recent real-world changes in the etiologies of liver cirrhosis (LC) in Japan, we conducted a nationwide survey in the annual meeting of the Japan Society of Hepatology (JSH).
Methods
We investigated the etiologies of LC patients accumulated from 68 participants in 79 institutions (N = 48,621). We next assessed changing trends in the etiologies of LC by analyzing cases in which the year of diagnosis was available (N = 45,834). We further evaluated the transition in the real number of newly identified LC patients by assessing data from 36 hospitals with complete datasets for 2008–2016 (N = 18,358).
Results
In the overall data, HCV infection (48.2%) was the leading cause of LC in Japan, and HBV infection (11.5%) was the third-most common cause. Regarding the transition in the etiologies of LC, the contribution of viral hepatitis-related LC dropped from 73.4 to 49.7%. Among the non-viral etiologies, alcoholic-related disease (ALD) and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH)-related LC showed a notable increase (from 13.7 to 24.9% and from 2.0 to 9.1%, respectively). Regarding the real numbers of newly diagnosed patients from 2008 to 2016, the numbers of patients with viral hepatitis-related LC decreased, while the numbers of patients with non-viral LC increased.
Conclusions
HCV has remained the main cause of LC in Japan; however, the contribution of viral hepatitis as an etiology of LC is suggested to have been decreasing. In addition, non-viral LC, such as ALD-related LC and NASH-related LC, is suggested to have increased as etiologies of LC in Japan.