Journal of Viral Hepatitis, 09/27/2011 Clinical Article
Kawaoka T et al. – With regard to the prognosis of patients with sustained viral response (SVR), it is desirable to achieve SVR with interferon therapy even when administered after hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) treatment. IL–28B genotype is a potentially useful marker for the response to pegylated interferon–alpha plus ribavirin combination therapy therapy administered after curative treatment of HCV–related HCC.

Methods
78 patients treated between January 2005 and January 2009 were studied in this study group.
Sustained viral response (SVR) rate was 25.8% (15/58) in patients infected with HCV–genotype 1 and 55.0% (11/20) in those with genotype 2.
Among the 78 patients, 32 (41.0%) could not complete the treatment protocol, and this was because of HCC recurrence in 17 (53%) of them.

Results
Multivariate analysis identified partial early viral response (pEVR) as the only independent determinant of SVR [odds ratio (OR) 14.73, P=0.013] for patients with genotype 1.
Multivariate analysis identified male gender (OR 8.72, P=0.001) and interleukin–28B (IL–28B) genotype (rs8099917) TT (OR 7.93, P=0.007) as independent predictors of pEVR.
Multivariate analysis also identified IL–28B genotype GG+TG (OR 14.1, P=0.021) and α–fetoprotein >30 (OR 5.4, P=0.031) as independent predictors of null response.
Patients with SVR showed a better survival rate than those without SVR (P=0.034).
Second HCC recurrence rate tended to be lower in patients with SVR than in those without SVR (P=0.054).

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