Mysterious Linkages Between Hepatitis C Virus Genotypes, Interleukin-28B Genotypes and Viral Clearance- A Meta-Analysis

Background: recent genome wide association studies (gwas) have shown important roles of single nucleotide polymorphisms (snp) near region of interleukin b 28 (il28b) gene in spontaneous and drug-induced clearance of hepatitis c virus (hcv) in genotype 1 hcv infection. objectives: this meta-analysis was designed to determine the world-wide distribution patterns of il28b genotypes and alleles, and to find possible linkages between il28b and hcv genotypes. patients and methods: manual and electronic databases were searched. critical appraisal was performed. according to the results of heterogeneity tests, we used fix/random model for the analysis. the data concerning patients’ ethnicity and hcv genotypes were analyzed by using statistical analysis software. results: a total of 255 articles were found. after article review and quality assessment, 50 studies, including 18662 patients and 1313 healthy subjects, were analyzed. presence of hcv genotype 3 versus genotype 1 was significantly associated with a higher frequency of cc genotype and c allele, with an odds ratio (or) of 1.68 (95% ci: 1.44-1.99) and 1.49 (95% ci: 1.33-1.67), respectively. prevalence of the rs12979860 cc genotype among genotype 1 hcv infected patients of asian ethnicity was 69.48% (95% ci: 65.20-73.77), which was significantly higher than its prevalence [33.27% (95% ci: 28.88-37.67)] in the caucasian genotype 1 hcv infected patients. prevalence of rs12979860 tt genotype in the african-american genotype 1 hcv infected patients was the highest [36.20% (95% ci: 32.91-39.49)], and significantly different compared to all other ethnicities. conclusions: there were significant linkages between hcv genotypes and il28b genotypes/alleles. patients with a favorable il28b and genotypes 1 and 4 hcv infection stand a better chance to clear hcv in the acute phase.