Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a major cause of chronic liver
disease and hepatocellular carcinoma worldwide. The highest prevalence of HCV
infection was reported to occur in Egypt. It is crucial to determine the predictors of
Sustained Viral Response (SVR) to Pegylated Interferon (peg-INF) / Ribavirin (RBV)
therapy in chronic HCV Egyptians, in order to select the patients who will get benefit
from this costly therapy that has frequent side effects. Pretreatment serum interferon
Inducible Protein-10 (IP-10) level measurement and genotyping for IL28B rs12979860
polymorphism, were carried out on 82 Egyptian chronic HCV patients receiving peg-
INF/ RBV dual therapy for 48 weeks. It was revealed that patients with SVR had lower
baseline IP-10 level. The baseline IP-10 level with the best sensitivity and specificity
for identifying SVR was 499.02 pg/ml, with 100% specificity and 82% sensitivity.
Moreover, the response rates to this dual therapy were 86.2%, 52.9%, 0.0% for
genotypes CC, CT, and TT of the IL28B rs12979860 polymorphism respectively. So it
can be said that carriage of a C allele is favorably associated with treatment response.
Also a statistically significant lower serum IP-10 baseline level was found in the
homozygous carriers of favorable CC genotype as compared with carriers of CT and
TT genotypes. In conclusion, baseline serum IP-10 and genotyping for IL28B
rs12979860 polymorphism are of significant value in predicting the response to peg-
INF/ RBV dual therapy in Egyptian chronic HCV infection patients