title: Incidence of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma among individuals with chronic hepatitis B virus infection.
abstract: Although hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection has been shown to be associated with development of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), few studies have investigated the association between chronic HBV infection and NHL. The purpose of this study was to compare the incidence of NHL between patients with and without chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. Using automated laboratory result and clinical data from two United States health systems, we identified individuals with chronic HBV infection from January 1, 1995 through December 31, 2001. Using each health system's population-based tumor registry, we identified all cases of NHL diagnosed through December 31, 2002. We excluded any individual with a history of NHL or human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). We fit Cox proportional hazards models to calculate hazard ratios comparing the incidence of NHL between chronic HBV-infected patients (N = 3,888) and patients without HBV (N = 205,203) drawn from the source populations. We identified 8 NHL cases in the chronic HBV infection cohort and 111 cases in the comparison cohort. Patients with chronic HBV infection were 2.8 times more likely to develop NHL than matched comparison patients (adjusted hazard ratio = 2.80, 95% confidence interval = 1.16-6.75), after controlling for age, race, sex, income, Charlson comorbidity index, study site, and HCV infection.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  chronic HBV-infected patients were nearly 3 times more likely to develop NHL than comparison patients.
authors.affiliation: Josephine Ford Cancer Center, Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, MI, USA. muyood@muyood.com
authors.forename: Marianne
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ulcickas Yood
authors.forename: Charles P
authors.initials: CP
authors.lastname: Quesenberry
authors.forename: Dianlin
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.forename: Cary
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Caldwell
authors.forename: Karen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Wells
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Shan
authors.forename: Lynn
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Sanders
authors.forename: Mary Lou
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Skovron
authors.forename: Uchenna
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Iloeje
authors.forename: M Michele
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Manos
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D006528:Carcinoma, Hepatocellular / Q000453:epidemiology; D015331:Cohort Studies; D005260:Female; D019694:Hepatitis B, Chronic / Q000150:complications*; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D008113:Liver Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology; D008228:Lymphoma, Non-Hodgkin / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000401:mortality; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology