Because the age at onset of HCC and the length of time between HCV infection and the development of HCC (the primary end-points of this study) satisfied the assumption of normal distribution (Kolmogorov–Smirnov

test, P > 0.05), we used stepwise regression analysis for multivariate analyses. We evaluated the association between the rs738409 mutant G allele and each outcome using a recessive model of inheritance, comparing G allele homozygotes (GG genotype) with patients carrying one copy or no copies of the G allele (CG or CC genotypes) because this was suggested to be the most appropriate one by studies of the impact of rs738409 Y-27632 nmr on CHC liver damage.[36, 41] The Jonckheere–Terpstra trend test for continuous variables and the Cochran–Armitage trend test for categorical variables were used to evaluate the increasing or decreasing tendency of the findings across rs738409 CC, CG and GG genotypes. All statistical analyses were two-sided, and the threshold of the reported P-values for significance was less than 0.05. AZD3965 ic50 All statistical analyses were performed using the R version 2.13.1 software (http://www.r-project.org).

PATIENT CHARACTERISTICS ARE shown in Table 1. Frequencies of the rs738409 CC, CG and GG genotypes were 27.9% (100/358), 49.2% (176/358) and 22.9% (82/358), respectively. The SNP genotype distribution was in Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium (P-value was non-significant). The median age at onset of the HCC patients was 69.76 years,

and approximately 55% oxyclozanide were male. Table 2 shows the age at onset of patients with HCC and the associations among rs738409 genotypes, sex, BMI, alcohol consumption, HCV genotype and HCV viral load. The median ages (1st–3rd quartile) at onset in patients with HCC for the rs738409 GG and non-GG (CC/CG) genotypes were 67.8 years (range, 60.6–74.0) and 69.9 years (range, 65.2–75.6), respectively. The median age was significantly younger in patients with the rs738409 GG genotype than in those with non-GG genotype (P = 0.004). In multivariate analysis, early age at onset of HCC was independently associated with rs738409 GG genotype (P < 0.001), male sex (P = 0.004) and higher BMI (P = 0.03). The median ages at onset of patients with HCC for the CC and CG genotypes were 70.3 and 69.7 years, respectively. The Jonckheere–Terpstra trend test showed a significant trend across the GG, CG and CC alleles (P = 0.005; Fig. 1). One hundred and sixty-six patients had histories of blood transfusion. The median (1st–3rd quartile) intervals between blood transfusion and the onset of HCC in patients with rs738409 GG and non-GG (CC/CG) genotypes were 39.96 (range, 33.43–45.84) and 40.85 years (range, 33.52–46.76), respectively. In multivariate analysis, the median interval between blood transfusion and the onset of HCC was significantly shorter in patients with rs738409 GG genotype (P = 0.008) and male sex (P < 0.001) (Table 3).