Chronic hepatitis C: Treat or wait? Medical decision making in clinical practice

Table 1 Demographic data and basic characteristics

Characteristics	Not treated (n = 7658)	Treated (n = 6341)
% of the 13 999 patients	55.7	45.3
Genotypes 1/4/5/6 (%)	69.8	59.4
Genotypes 2/3 (%)	30.2	40.6
Age (yr, median)	44.0	41.0
BMI (kg/m2, median)	24.2	24.3
Gender (male %)	56.6	61.1
Regulär employment (%)	35.3	50.2
Infection length (yr, median)	11.0	10.0
Ultrasound performed (%)	76.8	87.6
Liver biopsy performed (%)	12.8	30.2
Fibrosis score F 0-1	72.8	58.6
Fibrosis score F 2-4	27.2	41.4
Active drug or alcohol abuse (%)	28.3	13.8
HIV co-infection (%)	6.7	3.7
Psychiatric disease (%)	14.8	9.2
Severe language problems (%)	9.6	10.0
Initial HCV-RNA (IU/mL, median)	482 500	500 000
ALT (U/L, median)	61.0	78.0
Thrombocytes (/μL, median)	217 000	218 000
At least on concomitant disease (%)	62.3	42.6

BMI: Body mass index; HIV: Human immunodeficiency virus; HCV: Hepatitis C virus; ALT: Alanine aminotransferase.