Background: Egypt has the highest prevalence of HCV all over the world with 9% countrywide and up to 42% in certain rural areas. Combined PEG-IFN and ribavirin is still the only standard of care treatment in spite of its side effects, high costs and low sustained virological response rates. Hence, this provides a compelling reason for the identification of biomarker predictors of disease response to treatment.
Aim of the work: This study is designed to identify IL28B gene polymorphisms in patients with chronic hepatitis C genotype 4 who received standard of care therapy to highlight its impact on response to treatment.
Location of study: Viral Hepatitis Treatment Center at Al-Ahrar Hospital, Sharkia Governorate. and Biochemistry Departments of Faculty of Medicine, Zagazig University.
Methods: Case control study on 124 patients with chronic hepatitis C who finished their treatment with standard of care therapy ( pegylated interferon and ribavirin). Sixty two patients were non responders to SOC therapy (case group) and 62 other patients were responders (control group). In addition to the chemical, laboratory data and histological parameters that were taken from their files, blood samples were taken at the time of study for detection of SNPs for rs8099917 by PCR-RFLP technique.
Results: The TT homozygous of rs8099917 genotype was detected in 54 (43.54%) of overall HCV patients, 42 of them (67.74%) achieved SVR. The GT heterozygous was detected in 48 (38.71%) of HCV patients, SVR was achieved in 9 (14.52%) of them. While, the GG genotype was found in 22 patients and 11 of them only (17.74%) were responders. Multiple regression analysis identified IL28 B SNP genotype as the single independent predictor of response to SOC therapy.
Conclusion: These data suggest that host genetics may be useful for the prediction of treatment outcomes and that IL28B SNP genotype is an important predictive biomarker for SVR in patients with HCV genotypes 4.