Analysis of Risk Factors Associated with the Development of Hepatocellular Carcinoma in Chronic HBV-Infected Chinese: A Meta-Analysis

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a major risk factor for the development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in China. At present, there still are 9.3 million chronic HBV-infected Chinese. Numerous studies have explored the association between possible factors and hepatocellular carcinoma risk, however, the results remains inconsistent. Therefore, we did this pooled analysis so as to get a precise result. Here, we took the chronic HBV-infected Chinese as the object. We systematically searched for studies evaluating whether the proposed factors changed HCC risk in PubMed, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, VIP database and Wanfang data. Odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated by Review Manager 5.0 and publication bias was determined by Begg’s test and Egger’s test. In total, 3165 cases and 10,896 controls from 27 studies were included in this meta-analysis. Our results showed that pooled OR with 95% CI for each of the factors investigated were: non-antiviral treatment 2.70 (2.01, 3.62), high HBV DNA levels 2.61 (1.73, 3.94), alcohol consumption 2.19 (1.53, 3.13), a family history of HCC 3.58 (2.53, 5.06) and male gender 2.14 (1.68, 2.73), respectively. Our meta-analysis supports that high HBV DNA levels, non-antiviral treatment, alcohol consumption, a family history of HCC and male gender contributed to the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma in chronic HBV-infected Chinese from currently available evidence. Given the high prevalence of the non-antiviral treatment and alcohol drinking, behavior interventions for the two factors should be tackled first.