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
Keywords: HCV, IL28B, IP-10, Interferon, ribavirin., sustained virological response
