ABSTRACT
Background: In Egypt, the prevalence of hepatitis C virus infection is high [about 20%]. Chronic hepatitis C [CHC] is a slowly progressive disease complicated by liver cirrhosis, hepatic decompensation, and hepatocellular carcinoma. Treatment of CHC with pegylated interferon-alpha [peg-IFN-alpha]/ribavirin [RBV] combination therapy was the standard of care therapy until 2014 and is used until now in some regimens with new direct acting antiviral drugs. Some hepatitis C virus proteins [core, E2, NS4A, NS5A, and NS2] induce interleukin-8 [IL-8], which inhibits the antiviral activity of IFN-alpha. It was found to be significantly higher in patients with nonsustained virological response [non-SVR] than in patients with SVR to IFN/RBV therapy. IL-10 is a Th2 cytokine, and an imbalance between Th1/Th2 immune response could influence the clinical course of CHC and response to treatment. Some studies showed that pretreatment IL-10 serum level is much higher in patients with non-SVR than in those with SVR to therapy and could be considered as a good predictor for response to IFN/RBV therapy
Aim of the work: The aim of the study was to determine pretreatment serum levels of IL-8 and IL-10 in Egyptian CHC patients and their value in the prediction of response to peg-IFN/RBV therapy
Patients and methods: This study included 75 CHC Egyptian patients and 14 healthy individuals [control group]. Pretreatment serum levels of IL-8 and IL-10 were measured and then CHC patients were subjected to peg-IFN/RBV therapy
Results: SVR was achieved in 64% of treated CHC patients, whereas 36% were non-SVR. Serum levels of IL-8 and IL-10 were significantly lower in controls than in CHC patients and in the SVR than in the non-SVR group
Conclusion: We can consider serum IL-8 and IL-10 pretreatment levels as good predictive noninvasive markers to predict SVR to peg-IFN and RBV therapy in CHC patients