Volume 62, Issue 3, pages 684–693, September 2015
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1 Institute of Digestive Disease, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
2 Department of Medicine and Therapeutics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
3 State Key Laboratory of Digestive Disease, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
4 Department of Statistics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
5 Big Data Decision Analytics Research Center, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
*Address reprint requests to: Henry L.Y. Chan, M.D., Department of Medicine and Therapeutics, 9/F Prince of Wales Hospital, 30-32 Ngan Shing Street, Shatin, Hong Kong. E-mail: [email protected]; fax: +1-852-2637-3852.
Potential conflict of interest: Dr. Grace Wong advises, is on the speakers’ bureau, and received grants from Otsuka. She is on the speakers’ bureau and received grants from Bristol-Myers Squibb, Echosens, and Furui. She advises AbbVie and Gilead. Dr. Vincent Wong advises and is on the speakers’ bureau for Roche and Novartis. He advises Otsuka, Gilead, and AbbVie. He is on the speakers’ bureau for Bristol-Myers Squibb, Abbott, and Echosens. Dr. Chan consults, is on the speakers’ bureau, and received grants from Roche. He consults and is on the speakers’ bureau for Abbott, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Gilead, Merck, and Novartis. He is on the speakers’ bureau for Echosens and GlaxoSmithKline.
Widespread and long-term use of oral nucleos(t)ide analogs (NAs) to treat chronic hepatitis B (CHB) brings about safety data in a real-life setting. We aimed to determine the risks of renal and bone side effects in patients receiving or who have received NAs as CHB treatment. A territory-wide cohort study using the database from Hospital Authority, the major provider of medical services in Hong Kong, was conducted. We identified CHB patients by International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification diagnosis codes, diagnosed between 2000 and 2012. The primary events were renal (incident renal failure and renal replacement therapy [RRT]) and bone events (incident hip, vertebral, and all fractures). A 3-year landmark analysis was used to evaluate the relative risk of primary outcome in patients with or without NA treatment. A total of 53,500 CHB patients (46,454 untreated and 7,046 treated), who were event free for 3 years, were included in the analysis. At a median follow-up of 4.9 years, chronic renal failure, RRT, all fractures, hip fractures, and vertebral fractures occurred in 0.6%, 0.2%, 0.7%, 0.1%, and 0.1% of untreated subjects and 1.4%, 0.7%, 1.3%, 0.2%, and 0.2% of treated subjects. After propensity score weighting, NA therapy did not increase the risk of any of the events (hazard ratios [HRs] ranged from 0.79 to 1.31; P = 0.225-0.887). Exposure to nucleotide analogues, compared with nucleoside analogs, increased the risk of hip fracture (HR = 5.69; 95% confidence interval: 1.98-16.39; P = 0.001), but not other events (HR = 0.58-1.44; P = 0.202-0.823). Conclusions: NA treatment does not increase the risk of renal and bone events in general. Nucleotide analogs may increase the risk of hip fracture, but the overall event rate is low. (Hepatology 2015;62:684–693)