ABSTRACT
This study aimed to investigate relationship of the HCV genome structure and treatment with Pegylated Interferonα/Ribavirin (peg-IFNα/RBV) Egyptian patient. Mutations in two sites of HCV genome; the internal ribosome entry site(IRES) and the interferon sensitivity determining region (ISDR) of HCV genotype 4a were studied in details including DNAsequences and mutations detection in response to treatment. Ninety patients, responders and non-responders, to treatmentwith peg-IFN α /RBV were included in this study. IRES and ISDR regions were amplified by RT-PCR using specific designedprimers, and amplified regions were sequenced. The data obtained were aligned with published sequences in GenBank usingBLAST program. Results of this study have revealed that there are different mutations in the studied sequences in both ISDRand IRES regions. The predicted amino acids sequences in the ISDR region showed significant differences ranging from oneup to more than eight mutations in the HCV Genome sequences. Although there was a significant difference betweensequences of HCV RNA isolated from responders and non-responders, these data were not able to give an absolute answerwhether response to interferon therapy is directly/relates to the structure of the HCV genome