Hepatitis Monthly
Najmeh Namazee1, Shahnaz Sali1, Sorour Asadi1, 
Mostafa Shafiei2, Bita Behnava2, Seyed Moayed Alavian2,*Despite significant advances in the treatment of chronic hepatitis C in the past decades, factors which can affect response rates to combination therapy; peginterferon and ribavirin, are still under study and reaching sustained virological response (SVR) is affected by several different factors.
To investigate predictor factors contributing to SVR in Iranian patients.
The present non-randomized, clinical trial was conducted on 100 patients referred to the Tehran Hepatitis Center in 2009-2011. The patients were administered combined peginterferon ?-2a-ribavirin treatment, based on the standard protocol of the Iranian Ministry of Health. At the end of the treatment, the SVR rate and predictors were evaluated.
The mean age of the patients was 42 and 78% were male. Genotype 1a was the most common (70%) and 55% of patients were treatment nave. The outcomes showed that 12%, 16% and 22% patients were; non-responders, breakthroughs and relapsers, respectively, while 50% of the patients reached SVR. Patients reaching SVR were aged 40 years or lower, they were less likely to have been a non-responder in prior treatments, more likely to have a non-1a genotype and a higher number had an HCV RNA of less than 600 000 IU/ml. The multivariate analysis showed that an age of 40 or lower (OR = 3.74, CI95% = 1.52-9.22), a non-1a genotype (OR = 3.71, CI 95% = 1.40-9.81) and an HCV RNA less than 600 000 IU/ml (OR = 2.52, CI 95% = 1.03-6.15) may be useful SVR predictors.
The findings of the present study showed that half of the patients reached SVR through combined peginterferon ?-2a and ribavirin treatment, the majority of whom had genotype 3a and a minority had genotype 1a. In addition, an age of 40 or lower, non-1a genotype and a viral load less than 600 000 IU/ml were strong SVR predictors.
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© 2012, Author(s). This open-access article is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.
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