• Kazunori Yoh, Hiroki Nishikawa, Hirayuki Enomoto, Akio Ishii, Yoshinori Iwata, Yuho Miyamoto, Noriko Ishii, Yukihisa Yuri, Kunihiro Hasegawa, Chikage Nakano, Takashi Nishimura, Nobuhiro Aizawa, Yoshiyuki Sakai, Naoto Ikeda, Tomoyuki Takashima, Ryo Takata, Hiroko Iijima, and Shuhei Nishiguchi.
• Division of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Disease, Department of Internal Medicine, Hyogo College of Medicine, Hyogo 663-8501, Japan. mm2wintwin@ybb.ne.jp.
• Nutrients. 2017 Oct 18; 9 (10).

AimsWe aimed to examine changes in skeletal muscle mass in chronic hepatitis C (CHC) patients undergoing interferon (IFN)-free direct acting antivirals (DAAs) therapy who achieved sustained virological response (SVR).Patients And MethodsA total of 69 CHC patients treated with DAAs were analyzed. We compared the changes in skeletal muscle index (SMI) using bio-impedance analysis at baseline and SMI at SVR. SMI was calculated as the sum of skeletal muscle mass in upper and lower extremities divided by height squared (cm²/m²). Further, we identified pretreatment parameters contributing to the increased SMI at SVR.ResultsSMI in males at baseline ranged from 6.73 to 9.08 cm²/m² (median, 7.65 cm²/m²), while that in females ranged from 4.45 to 7.27 cm²/m² (median, 5.81 cm²/m²). At SVR, 36 patients (52.2%) had increased SMI as compared with baseline. In the univariate analysis, age (p = 0.0392), hyaluronic acid (p = 0.0143), and branched-chain amino acid to tyrosine ratio (BTR) (p = 0.0024) were significant pretreatment factors linked to increased SMI at SVR. In the multivariate analysis, only BTR was an independent predictor linked to the increased SMI at SVR (p = 0.0488).ConclusionPretreatment BTR level can be helpful for predicting increased SMI after SVR in CHC patients undergoing IFN-free DAAs therapy.

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