A study presented at the AASLD Liver Meeting found that Latino and Hispanic patients with primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) were more likely to experience certain events compared with White and Asian individuals. However, there was no statistically significant difference in total events of hepatic complications.
The researchers conducted a retrospective review of 450 patients with PBC from a tertiary care transplant center in Northern California between January 1, 2004, and December 31, 2023. The study excluded patients who did not have transient elastography and those who had PBC with autoimmune hepatitis overlap.
The final sample included 161 patients (mean age, 62 years). Consistent with previous findings that PBC occurs more frequently in women, 93.8% of the cohort were female. Most patients (74%) were white, 16.9% were Hispanic or Latino, and 15.5% were Asian. Mean baseline liver stiffness was 7.4 kPa in patients with F1–3 disease and 31.6 kPa for patients with F4 disease.
Over 9 years of follow-up (2015–2024), 25 patients had hepatic complications. Latino/Hispanic patients were more likely to have hepatic encephalopathy (P=.02), more esophageal varices (P=.05), and more events of liver transplant listing (P=.05) compared with the other ethnic cohorts studied. The researchers did not observe any significant differences between white and Asian patients.
“In our analysis, we find that Hispanic or Latino patients did have a statistically significant increase in events of esophageal varices, hepatic encephalopathy, and liver transplantation listing compared to Non-Hispanic or Latino patients but did not have a statistically significant difference in total events of hepatic complications,” the authors concluded.
Reference
Kode V, Sudat S, Wang Y, Yimam K. Characteristics of patients with primary biliary cholangitis that received transient elastography at a tertiary liver transplant center in Northern California. Abstract 2186. Presented at the 2024 American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases’ 75th Liver Meeting; Nov. 15–19, 2024; San Diego.
