Histological outcome of chronic hepatitis B in children treated with interferon alpha

摘要

AIM: To evaluate the effect of interferon alpha (IFN-α)treatment on the liver histology in children with chronic hepatitis B and to evaluate the usefulness of various histological scoring systems of liver histology in this group of patients.METHODS: Fibrosis stage and inflammation grade were assessed according to Batts and Ludwig, Ishak et al., and METAVIR (only fibrosis stage) before and 12 mo after IFN-α treatment termination in 93 children aged 2-16years with chronic hepatitis B.RESULTS: None of the three numerical scoring systems for liverfibrosis showed statistically significant differences in liver fibrosis, while evolution of inflammatory activity revealed statistically significant improvement in the whole group of children with chronic hepatitis B treated with IFN-α and in responders. Significantly positive correlations were found between fibrosis stage and inflammation grade in the respective scoring systems.CONCLUSION: Treatment with IFN-α did not improve histological fibrosis but decreased inflammatory activity in children with chronic hepatitis B. The three semiquantitative scoring systems seem to be comparable in the estimation of the inflammation grade and fibrosis stage in this group of children.