Introduction: Acute hepatitis C has become an infrequent disease in Europe. There is only limited data on disease severity in acute hepatitis C investigating more than 100 patients per study. We aimed to determine the role of BMI, sex and age in patients recruited for the German Hep-Net HCV treatment studies.

POSTERShistologicaly and/or by imagistical and endoscopic data, follow-up period of over 24 months from the moment of diagnosis of HCV liver cirrhosis; hepatocellular carcinoma was confirmed using the Barcelona criteria.We excluded: patients HIV positive, HBV positive, alfa-fetoprotein >400 ng/ml or with morphological anomalies at ultrasound or CT scan.Univariate analysis compared quantitative variables using the chi2 test and qualitative variables using the Student t test.Multivariate analysis used a model of logistic regression.Results: Of the 200 patients with HCV cirrhosis (mean follow-up 47 months), 39 presented evolution to HCC.Univariate analysis identified 9 risk factors for evolution to HCC: age >60 years, male gender, alcohol consumption >20 g/day, coexistence of diabetes mellitus, serum bilirubin >2 mg/dl, ALT > 2×N, thrombocytes <80,000/mmc, Metavir score A, Child score.In multivariate analysis, Metavir score A (OR = 7.41, p = 0.027), ALT (OR = 1.9; p = 0.023) and age (OR = 2.5; p = 0.001) were independent factors of evolution to HCC.Conclusions: In patients with HCV liver cirrhosis, age >60 years and existence of significant liver inflammation (Metavir score A and ALT) are independent predictive factors for evolution to HCC.