Evaluation of clinical characteristics and treatment patterns of patients infected with hepatitis B

Abstract

Aims: Chronic hepatitis B virus (CHB) infection causes chronic liver disease, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma. Our study aimed to evaluate the effects of newly initiated tenofovir alafenamide fumarate (TAF) on clinical parameters in naïve and treatment-experienced patients with CHB. Methods: This retrospective, single-center observational study was performed in the Department of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology, Kayseri City Hospital. Demographic and clinical characteristics of the cases were obtained from the outpatient clinic follow-up files. The change over time in the clinical data of all patients at the beginning, 3rd, 6th, and 12th months of TAF treatment was evaluated using One-Way Analysis of Variance in Repeated Measures (ANOVA) and Friedman Analysis of Variance in Repeated Measures, according to their compliance with normal distribution. Results: The mean age of the patients was 56.5±12.2 years, and 59 (57.8%) were male. 70.6% of the patients had at least one additional disease, and the most common additional diseases were hypertension (29.4%) and Diabetes mellitus (23.5%). Of the 102 patients who started TAF treatment, 81 (79.4%) were treatment-experienced, and 21 (20.6%) were treatment-naïve patients. The reasons for switching to TAF treatment were osteoporosis (44.1%), the need for a more potent agent (34.3%), and low GFR (13.7). While the detectable HBV DNA rate was 38.2% at the beginning of treatment, this rate was 2.9% at the 12th month (p