Heterogeneity of hepatitis C-virus in genotype 1 patients treated with the combination therapy of pegylated interferon and ribavirin

Hepatitis C is a global health problem. Hepatitis C virus is the etiological agent. After the acute phase of infection, which is asymptomatic in most patients, at least 80% of patients develop chronic hepatitis C. 20%-40% of infected people may develop cirrhosis, and 2%-4% of them may ultimately develop liver cancer. At present, HCV-related end-stage liver disease is the leading reason for liver transplantation. <br>Hepatitis C has been first described in 1989. Over the past 15 years treatment has been constantly improved. Today a combination therapy with pegylated interferon a (PEG-IFN) and ribavirin is recommended. The sustained virological response rate six months after stop of treatment (SVR) is about > 55% in treatment naive patients. Because the treatment with PEG-IFN plus ribavirin is 6 to 12 months with a large number of adverse events and costly, it is mandatory to find factors to predict the effect of therapy. <br>As a typical RNA virus, HCV has a high mutation rate, which is especially pronounced in the HVR1 of the N-amino terminal region of E2. Genotypes, subtypes and quasispecies can be distinguished. Quasispecies refer to the genetic diversity of a virus population that can be observed in a single infected individual with individual viral genomes differing 1%-5% in nucleotide sequence. Single stand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) is an accurate and reproducible method to study the complexity of HCV quasispecies. <br>This study investigated the degree of complexity of HCV by f-SSCP. The data suggest that f-SSCP reflects the complexity of HCV quasispecies. Complexity – identified by the number of f SSCP peaks, is an important factor for the response to treatment with PEG-IFN plus ribavirin. A low number of SSCP peaks indicate a low degree of HCV quasispecies complexity, which corresponds with a higher response rate to therapy. Low HCV quasispecies in genotype 1 patient might be an additional predictor to response to therapy. On the other hand it could be shown that treatment with PEG-IFN plus ribavirin affects the quasispecies complexity of HCV. <br>The data indicate that quasispecies may be an additional factor which may be important for the response of the chronic HCV infection to PEG-IFN and Ribavirin.

Author dc:creator

• Cao, Hua

Contributors dc:contributor

• Rasenack, Jens

• Genotyp 1, pegyliertem Interferon
• Ribavirin
• genotype 1
• pegylated interferon

Repository record source_url

https://freidok.uni-freiburg.de/data/1479

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:freidok.uni-freiburg.de:1479