Patient's age modifies the impact of the proposed predictors of sustained virological response in chronic hepatitis C patients treated with PEG-interferon plus ribavirin

BackgroundThe aim of this study was to investigate the effect of patient's age on the impact of typically proposed predictors of sustained virological response (SVR) in treatment-naïve, high-pretreatment viral load (> 700.000 IU/ml), chronic hepatitis C (CHC) patients treated under real-life conditions in Greece.MethodsWe retrospectively analyzed 185 CHC patients (14.4% cirrhotics) who had been treated with weight-adjusted dosing (1.5 μg/kg per week) of pegylated interferon-a2b (PEG) plus genotype-based ribavirin (RIB) for 24 or 48 weeks of treatment, based on viral genotype. SVR was confirmed by undetectable serum HCV-RNA 6 months after the end of treatment.ResultsOverall, 68.5% of patients exhibited SVR and 31.5% were non-responders (non-SVRs). Among the non-SVRs, 71.4% were infected with HCV genotype-1. Importantly, 71.4% of genotype 4-infected treated patients exhibited SVR. In the multivariate analyses, only the early histological stage of liver disease (p = 0.015) and the presence of genotype non-1 infection (p = 0.003) were independent predictors of SVR. For patients younger than 35 years, none of the baseline parameters and neither viral genotype (p = 0.284) nor the stage of liver disease (p = 0.351) was an independent predictor of non-SVR, whereas for patients between 35 and 55, only the presence of genotype-1 infection independently predicted non-SVR (p = 0.008). For older patients (> 55 years), only the histological stage of liver disease (p = 0.047) and not the viral genotype (p = 0.275) independently predicted non-SVR.ConclusionsThe impact of the typical predictors of SVR, such as viral genotype and liver histopathology, is modified according to patient's age in currently approved combination treatment.