الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Despite recent success after the introduction of combination ierapy with peginterferon alpha 2(a or b) and ribavirin, iproximately 60% of patients with genotype 4 fail to respond. esistance to antiviral therapy remains a serious problem in the anagement of chronic hepatitis C. Relapse after therapeutic eradication of HCV is also a serious ’oblem as SVR rate for genotype 4 is only 50%. Patients ”cured” after itiviral treatment with persistent viral response may have occult :V infection in liver or PBMCs. Thus HCV in PBMCs may be one of e causes of relapse after antiviral therapy. Perhaps clearance of :V RNA in PBMCs is a predictor of persistent response to antiviral erapy and is a reference to formulate the duration of antiviral erapy in chronic hepatitis C. Aim of our work was to detect hepatitis C virus RNA in ripheral blood mononuclear cells in comparison with hepatitis C us RNA in serum in patients with chronic hepatitis C virus who rve responded to treatment (Interferon alpha 2a or alpha 2b plus iavirin] to elucidate if peripheral blood mononuclear cells are .ated to relapse after clearance of the virus from serum or affect the stained viral response. We selected 22 patients (18 males and 4 females) with chronic ~V infection who finished a 48 weeks course of peginterferon alpha :a or b) plus ribavirin and showed a negative PCR test for HCV RNA serum. HCV RNA was found in PBMCs of 3 patients (14%) by real ne PCR. |