Hepatitis C virus infection is an independent prognostic factor in follicular lymphoma

// Joji Shimono 1, 9 , Hiroaki Miyoshi 1 , Takeharu Kato 2, 7 , Takeshi Sugio 3 , Kohta Miyawaki 3 , Tomohiko Kamimura 4 , Takuto Miyagishima 5 , Tetsuya Eto 6 , Yoshitaka Imaizumi 7 , Koji Kato 3 , Koji Nagafuji 8 , Koichi Akashi 3 , Masao Seto 1 , Takanori Teshima 9 and Koichi Ohshima 1 1 Department of Pathology, Kurume University, School of Medicine, Kurume, Japan 2 Department of Hematology, Sasebo City General Hospital, Sasebo, Japan 3 Department of Medicine and Biosystemic Science, Kyushu University Faculty of Medicine, Fukuoka, Japan 4 Department of Hematology, Hara Sanshin Hospital, Fukuoka, Japan 5 Department of Hematology, Kushiro Rosai Hospital, Kushiro, Japan 6 Department of Hematology, Hamanomachi Hospital, Fukuoka, Japan 7 Department of Hematology, Atomic Bomb Disease and Hibakusha Medicine Unit, Atomic Bomb Disease Institute, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan 8 Department of Hematology, Kurume University, School of Medicine, Kurume, Japan 9 Department of Hematology, Hokkaido University Faculty of Medicine, Sapporo, Japan Correspondence to: Hiroaki Miyoshi, email: miyoshi_hiroaki@med.kurume-u.ac.jp Keywords: follicular lymphoma; hepatitis C virus; poor prognosis; NS3; overall survival Received: July 23, 2017 Accepted: November 13, 2017 Published: December 11, 2017 ABSTRACT Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a single-stranded RNA virus that not only affects hepatocytes, by B cells as well. It is thought that HCV is involved in the onset of B-cell lymphoma. The clinicopathological characteristics of HCV-positive diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) and HCV-positive splenic marginal zone lymphoma (SMZL) are known, but there has been no report on HCV-positive follicular lymphoma (FL). In this study, the clinicopathological characteristics of HCV-positive FL were examined in 263 patients with FL who were classified into a HCV-positive group with HCV antibody and negative groups without one. The number of patients with HCV-positive FL and HCV-negative FL was 10 (3.8%) and 253 (96.2%), respectively. The patients with HCV-positive FL commonly had more than one region of lymphadenopathy, Ann Arbor stage III/IV, hemoglobin