Background: Chronic hepatitis C infection afflicts millions of people worldwide. Measuring health literacy of these patients allows to assess the challenges capable of impacting health outcome and accessibility to health services. Health literacy is a multidimensional concept that involves the ability to obtain, access, and understand information and basic services necessary for health decision making.

Objective: To investigate core variables associated to health literacy in chronic hepatitis C patients.

Methods: cross-sectional study, conducted with 105 individuals with chronic hepatitis C in a health facility, in Brazil. Data were collected using the Health Literacy Questionnaire - Brazilian version (HLQ-Br). Demographic, clinical variables and knowledge related to hepatitis C were analyzed using descriptive analyses and linear regression using the Akaike information criterion to select variables that best relate to each dimension of health literacy. Goodness of fit was evaluated by adjusted R² and F test.

Results: Median age of participants was 54 (IQ=48-62) years. Males comprised 58% of the sample, 50% had complete the primary education, and 62% reported multimorbidity. The lowest mean HLQ-Br  scores were related to “having sufficient health information” (2.54, CI: 2.45-2.63), “understanding health information” (3.58, CI: 3.49-3.67). Regression analysis for three dimensions of health literacy resulted in high R², those are "appraisal of health information” (R²: 0,35), “finding good health information” (R²: 0,32) and “understanding of health information” (R²: 0,48). Independent variables presenting a negative association with HLQ-Br scores were age ("having sufficient information; finding good health information, and understanding health information", p<0,001); treatment ("appraisal of health information”, p<0,001); hypertension ("navigating the health system", p<0,05), "understanding health information", p<0,005) and type of transmission ("understanding health information" p<0,05).