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

Abstract Background The 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-naive, high-pretreatment viral load (> 700.000 IU/ml), chronic hepatitis C (CHC) patients treated under real-life conditions in Greece. Methods We 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. Results Overall, 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. Conclusions The 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.