The role of gender on clearance of hepatitis C virus: a different story in an area endemic for hepatitis B and C

We read with interest the article by Bakr et al ( GUT 2006;55:1183–7). The authors recruited 4720 residents aged 18–65 years from a rural community in Egypt, a country hyperendemic for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, which might be attributed to mass campaigns for intravenous antischistosomal treatment.1 They found that the HCV antibody (anti-HCV) was positive in 910 individuals (19.3%), and 38.5% of the anti-HCV-positive individuals were negative for serum HCV RNA. Interestingly, the authors concluded that women had a significantly higher HCV clearance rate (44.6% vs 33.7%, respectively; p = 0.001, adjusted OR 1.77) than men, which was similar to reports by Inoue et al 2 and Yamakawa et al 3 from Japan. We conducted a large-scale community-based study in southern Taiwan, a country hyperendemic for hepatitis B virus (HBV) …