Association of IL28B SNP With Progression of Egyptian HCV Genotype 4 Patients to End Stage Liver Disease

Background: il28b single nucleotide polymorphisms (snps) play important roles in the management of hepatitis c virus (hcv) infections and are strongly associated with spontaneous and treatment-induced hcv clearance. objectives: in the present study, the association between il28b variants and the progres- sion of hcv infection in egyptian patients infected with type 4a virus will be examined. patients and methods: frequencies of the protective genotype c/c of snp, rs12979860 were determined in healthy subjects, spontaneous resolvers, and chronic hcv type 4 patients with low f scores and in patients with end stage liver disease (esld). this study included a total of 404 subjects. patients infected with hcv type 4a (n = 304) were divided into; chronic hepatitis c (chc) with low f scores (chc, n = 110), end stage liver disease (n = 110), liver cirrhosis (lc) (n = 35) and hepatocellular carcinoma (hcc) patients (n = 75), spontaneous resolvers of hcv infection (n = 84) were also included. a healthy group representing the egyptian population (n = 100) was also included in the genotyping of il28b. the later was typed via a polymerase chain reaction based restriction fragment length polymorphism (pcr-rflp) assay analysis on purified genomic dna extracted from all individuals. results: a significant increase (p < 0.0005) was observed in frequencies of il-28b rs12979860 c/c genotypes in the healthy population, than in the chc, lc and hcc groups (c/c = 48%, 13%, 0%.and 0% respectively). on the other hand the c/c genotype was signifi- cantly higher (p < 0.0005) in spontaneous resolvers than in healthy subjects. a comparable significant increase in the frequency of c/t allele accompanied by mild elevation of t/t allele frequency, were detected along the progression towards esld. conclusions: genotype c/c is associated with viral clearance during acute infection. the sharp decline in the c/c genotype from healthy to chc subjects and the total absence of the c/c genotype in esld suggests a central role of this genotype against hcv disease progression.