Oral administration of lactoferrin enhances viral decline in patients with genotype-IB-related chronic hepatitis C treated with Peginterferon α-2B plus ribavirin

摘要

We previously reported that lactoferrin (Lf) lowers serum HCV-RNA levels in patients with genotype-lb-related chronic hepatitis C and that pre-administration of Lf improves the clinical outcome of treatment with interferon (IFN) plus ribavirin in patients with chronic hepatitis C. Here, to evaluate the efficacy of Lf on viral kinetics, we studied HCV dynamics in patients with genotype lb and a high viral load who were randomly assigned to the following 2 different treatment groups: (i) combination therapy involving Peginterferon a-2b plus ribavirin (Peg-R); (ii) combination therapy (Peg-R) plus oral administration of Lf at a dose of 600 mg/day (Peg-R-Lf). Patient baseline characteristics between the Peg-R group (n = 11) and the Peg-R-Lf group (n = 9) were similar. Mean serum HCV-RNA levels at baseline in the Peg-R and Peg-R-Lf groups were 1500 KIU/mL and 1468KIU/mL, respectively. Undetectable HCV-RNA in serum at 12 weeks