Vnitr Lek 2006, 52(6):590-595

The effect of patient's body weight, gender and baseline viral load on the efficacy of hepatitis C therapy

P. Husa^1,*, P. Šlesinger¹, H. Štroblová², A. Svobodník³

¹ Klinika infekčních chorob Lékařské fakulty MU a FN Brno, pracoviště Bohunice, přednosta doc. MUDr. Petr Husa, CSc.

² Oddělení klinické mikrobiologie FN Brno, pracoviště Bohunice, přednostka prim. MUDr. Alena Ševčíková

³ Centrum biostatistiky a analýz Lékařské fakulty MU v Brně, vedoucí doc. RNDr. Ladislav Dušek, Ph.D.

Today, the standard therapy of patients with chronic HCV (hepatitis C virus) infection is based on combination of pegylated interferon α (PEG-IFN) and ribavirin.


The study objective:
The aim of the study is to find correlations between patient's body weight, gender and baseline viral load and the efficacy of antiviral therapy in terms of achieving end-of-treatment viral response (ETVR) and sustained viral response (SVR).


Methods and patient sample:
We enrolled 133 patients with chronic HCV infection. All of them were treated by combination of PEG-IFN α-2a (180 μg once a week) and ribavirin. Ribavirin doses were the following: For body weight ≤ 74 kg - 800 mg daily in patients infected by genotype 2 (G2 - 3 patients) or G3 (18 patients), 1000 mg in patients infected by G1 (106 patients), G4 (1 patient) or G6 (1 patient); for body weight ≥ 75 kg - 1 200 mg daily in case of infection by G1.

Results:
To date, 122 patients completed the therapy; 107 of them completed their therapy at least 24 weeks ago, so they can be assessed for SVR. ETVR was achieved in 76 % and SVR in 60 % patients. Statistically higher proportion of SVR was observed in women (p = 0.039), patients with relatively lower body weight (p = 0.034), patients in lower baseline viral load (p = 0.010) and patients with genotypes 2 and 3 (p = 0,008). Correlation analysis of individual predictive factors showed the statistically significant correlation between body weight and gender (p < 0.001), gender and baseline viral load (p = 0.027) and body weight and virus genotype (p = 0.003). Therefore, the only independent predictive factor of ETVR (p = 0.020) and SVR (p = 0.010) was the level of baseline viral load.

Conclusion:
Efficacy of PEG-IFN therapy is significantly influenced by the level of baseline viral load. According to the results of this study, patient's body weight and gender are not independent predictive factors that affect the therapy efficacy.

Keywords: chronic hepatitis C; pegylated interferon (IFN); ribavirin; body weight; gender; baseline viral load

Received: January 26, 2006; Accepted: February 27, 2006; Published: June 1, 2006  Show citation