Orange Juice as Dietary Source of Antioxidants for Patients With Hepatitis C Under Antiviral Therapy

Forty-three patients with chronic hepatitis C who were being treated with pegylated interferon combined with ribavirin, according to the Clinical Protocol and Therapeutic Guidelines for Viral Hepatitis C and Co-infections of the Brazilian Health Ministry were randomly divided into two parallel groups: (1) orange juice (n = 23), which were supplemented with orange juice (500 mL/d) for 8 weeks; (2) control group (n = 20) composed of patients that were not drinking orange juice regularly. The recruitment process began in February 2012, the intervention was carried out from May 2012 to July 2012, and the data analysis started in September 2012. The sample number took into account variances on total cholesterol with a type I error α = 0.05 and a type II error β = 0.2 (80% power) (Dourado et al., 2015). The minimum sample size should have 20 individuals per group (n = 40), considering an approximately 15% dropout rate. Primary and secondary endpoints were the reduction of total cholesterol and modification of biochemical markers, respectively. Kolmogorov Smirnov and Levene test assessed normality and homogeneity of data, respectively. Assessment of the data was performed in all participants on the first and last day of the experiment. All the parameters were compared between the juice group and the control group using General Linear Model of Repeated Measures Analysis. Differences in baseline patients' characteristics between the two groups were analyzed by One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). The LSD signed rank post-test was used to assess significant changes in parameters after the start of treatment in each group, and the differences were considered statistically significant at p < 0.05.