A model explaining the correlations between IL28B-related genotypes, hepatitis C virus genotypes, and viral RNA levels.

摘要

During the last year, several groups have shown that genetic variation upstream of the IL28B gene is critical for the outcome of therapy in hepatitis C. In these studies, it has been shown that the distribution of IL28B-related single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotypes varies, not only geographically in a manner that explains racial differences in treatment response, but surprisingly also between uninfected subjects and patients infected with different hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotypes. For example, in a recent report in this journal by Mangia et al, it was pointed out that the favorable CC genotype at the rs12979860 SNP occurs more rarely in patients infected with HCV genotype 2 or 3 than in healthy subjects. In agreement with previous findings, these authors also noted that the baseline HCV RNA level was higher in patients carrying the CC genotype as compared with those with CT or TT genotype. Below we propose a model that may explain these observations.