Fibrosis progression in HCV carriers with mild hepatitis who possess the high-repetition variant of the DRD4 gene, a genetic marker for binge-drinking and risk-seeking behavior: a longitudinal study.

Background: Alcohol is a major determinant of the outcome of chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, but self-reported drinking habits lack reliability. We hypothesized that carriage of high-repetition variants (HRV) of the variable number of tandem repeats (VNTR) in exon III of the dopamine receptor D4 gene, linked to binge-drinking and risk-seeking behavior, might be a proxy measure of alcohol consumption, and aimed to verify whether it may affect histologic outcome.

Methods: A cohort of HCV patients with normal or near-normal aminotransferases (N = 128) underwent a liver biopsy as part of diagnostic work-up.