Giving direct-acting antiviral drugs to patients with hepatitis C may reduce their risk of developing hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), suggests a retrospective analysis of patients at 129 Veterans Health Administration hospitals.

The analysis included 22,500 patients who had been treated with direct-acting antiviral agents, of whom 19,518 had a sustained virological response (SVR) to the medication.

Patients who experienced SVR were far less likely to develop liver cancer: .90 vs 3.45 cancers/100 person-years, which translates into an adjusted hazard ratio of 0.28.

Patients who had cirrhosis, however, did not fare as well and were more than 4 times as likely to develop HCC despite having a sustained virological response (adjusted hazard ratio, 4.73).