Sustained virological response to antiviral treatment in chronic hepatitis C patients may be predictable by HCV-RNA clearance in peripheral blood mononuclear cells

摘要

The treatment of chronic hepatitis C (CHC) with the combination of Pegylated-interferon (Peg-IFN) and ribavirin results in a sustained clearance of hepatitis C virus (HCV) in nearly half of the patients [1-3]. Extrahepatic sites of HCV replication have been proposed as factors contributing to treatment resistance [4,5]- HCV can infect and start a replication cycle in peripheral blood mono-nuclear cells (PBMC) [5] where they can serve as a virus reservoir [6], but whether this phenomenon influences the response to Peg-IFN+ribavirin treatment in CHC patients is still a matter of debate [6-9]. It has also been reported that most of the patients with a rapid virological response (RVR) and contemporaneous clearance of HCV in PBMC at the first month of treatment achieve a sustained virological response (SVR), whereas those with RVR not associated with HCV clearance in PBMC frequently relapse. The data from another study, however, did not concur with this [7].