MONOCYTE CHEMOTACTIC PROTEIN AND RESPONSE TO PEGYLATED INTERFERON-ALPHA-2A TREATMENT IN PATIENTS WITH CHRONIC HEPATITIS C (CHC) GENOTYPE 4

The prevalence of hepatitis c virus (hcv) infection varies across the world,with the highest number of infections reported in egypt. monocyte chemotactic protein-1 (mcp-1) is a potent chemokine,and its hepatic expression is up-regulated during chronic hcv infection. fifty naive patients with chronic hepatitis c in national hepatology & tropical medicine research institute and 20 healthy volunteers as controls were enrolled in a prospective study designed with strict inclusion criteria to nullify the effect of confounding variables and further minimize selection bias. fifty naive patients were treated with peg-ifn-a2b,at a dose of 1801 g/kg subcutaneously every week plus ribavirin at a dose of 1000- 1200 mg/day,according to the patient's body weight,for 48 weeks. quantification of hcv-rna by real-time pcr and mcp-1 by elisa were performed for every patient and controls. there was a sta- tistically significant difference between patients and control group as regards the quantity of mcp-1 (p < 0.05) (mann-whitney test) (p = 0.004). there was a significant difference between responders and nonresponses regarding mcp-1 (p < 0.05),responders showed a higher percentage of cases with initial mcp-1 < 306 (p < 0.05). we conclude the importance of the detection of mcp-1 expression at the start of therapy as a factor for assessing the likelihood of hcv genotype 4 patients to achieving a sustained virological response to treatment with ifn-a2 in combination with ribavirin.