title: Racial/ethnic differences in spontaneous HCV clearance in HIV infected and uninfected women.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Among individuals without human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), African Americans have lower spontaneous clearance of hepatitis C virus (HCV) than Caucasians, and women have higher clearance than men. Few studies report racial/ethnic differences in acute HCV in HIV infected, or Hispanic women. We examined racial/ethnic differences in spontaneous HCV clearance in a population of HCV mono- and co-infected women.
  
  
  METHODS
  We conducted a cross sectional study of HCV seropositive women (897 HIV infected and 168 HIV uninfected) followed in the US multicenter, NIH-funded Women's Interagency HIV Study (WIHS), to determine the association of race/ethnicity with spontaneous HCV clearance, as defined by undetectable HCV RNA at study entry.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Among HIV and HCV seropositive women, 18.7 % were HCV RNA negative, 60.9 % were African American, 19.3 % Hispanic and 17.7 % Caucasian. HIV infected African American women were less likely to spontaneously clear HCV than Hispanic (OR 0.59, 95 % CI 0.38-0.93, p = 0.022) or Caucasian women (OR 0.57, 95 % CI 0.36-0.93, p = 0.023). Among HIV uninfected women, African Americans had less HCV clearance than Hispanics (OR 0.18, 95 % CI 0.07-0.48, p = 0.001) or Caucasians (OR 0.26, 95 % CI 0.09-0.79, p = 0.017). There were no significant differences in HCV clearance between Hispanics and Caucasians, among either HIV infected (OR 0.97, 95 % CI 0.57-1.66, p = 0.91) or uninfected (OR 1.45, 95 % CI 0.56-3.8, p = 0.45) women.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  African Americans were less likely to spontaneously clear HCV than Hispanics or Caucasians, regardless of HIV status. No significant differences in spontaneous HCV clearance were observed between Caucasian and Hispanic women. Future studies incorporating IL28B genotype may further explain these observed racial/ethnic differences in spontaneous HCV clearance.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, University of California, San Francisco, 513 Parnassus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94143-0358, USA. monika.sarkar@ucsf.edu
authors.forename: Monika
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sarkar
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Bacchetti
authors.forename: Phyllis
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Tien
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Mileti
authors.forename: Audrey L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: French
authors.forename: Brian R
authors.initials: BR
authors.lastname: Edlin
authors.forename: Marla
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Keller
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Seaberg
authors.forename: Marek J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Nowicki
authors.forename: Mary
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Young
authors.forename: Marion G
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Peters
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000150:complications*; D006526:Hepatitis C / Q000208:ethnology* / Q000821:virology; D006630:Hispanic or Latino / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D011446:Prospective Studies; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology; D044465:White People / Q000706:statistics & numerical data