北九州地区のc型慢性肝炎のインターフェロン治療効果について

The Kita-Kyushu district in Japan is one of the areas known to have a quite high prevalence of HCV infection. We analyzed the results of interferon therapy administered to 50 chronic hepatitis C patients living in this area (33 males and 17 females; ages between 28 and 65 years old). Interferon-alpha (human lymphoblast interferon, HLBI), 6 million units/day, was administered for 24 consecutive weeks. Before the therapy, the HCV levels, HCV-RNA genotype, and sequence of hypervariable region (HVR) of HCV were examined. Patients who were HCV-RNA negative and ALT≤30 IU/L at the completion of therapy and in the 6th month after the completion of therapy, were determined as complete responders (CR). In this study, 10 of 50 patients (20%) were CR. Among male patients, there were CR in each age group, whereas among female patients aged over 40 years old, there were no CR. The number of patients with low virus levels was larger in the genotype 2a/2b cases than in the genotype 1b cases. HVR sequences varied extensively, and had no correlation to interferon efficacy. Multivariate analysis showed that the pre-treatment HCV level is the most important predictor.