Prospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Aug 7, 2015; 21(29): 8935-8942
Published online Aug 7, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i29.8935
Interferon-λ polymorphisms and response to pegylated interferon in Iranian hepatitis C patients
Arghavan Haj-sheykholeslami, Maryam Keshvari, Heidar Sharafi, Ali Pouryasin, Khalil Hemmati, Fatemeh Mohammadzadehparjikolaei
Arghavan Haj-sheykholeslami, Khalil Hemmati, Fatemeh Mohammadzadehparjikolaei, The Liver, Pancreatic, and Biliary Diseases Research Center, Digestive Diseases Research Institute, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran 14117-13135, Iran
Maryam Keshvari, Blood Transfusion Research Center, High Institute for Research and Education in Transfusion Medicine, Tehran 14665-1157, Iran
Heidar Sharafi, Middle East Liver Disease Center, Tehran 14155-3651, Iran
Heidar Sharafi, Ali Pouryasin, Armin Pathobiology Laboratory, Tehran 1235642351, Iran
Author contributions: Keshvari M and Pouryasin A designed the research; All patients were evaluated and treated by Keshvari M; Sharafi H and Pouryasin A performed the molecular assessments; Hemmati K and Mohammadzadehparjikolaei F extracted the data from the patients’ documents and completed the side effect questionnaires by interviewing the patients; Sharafi H performed the statistical analysis; and Haj-sheykholeslami A wrote the article and the final draft was reviewed by Keshvari M.
Supported by Pooyesh Darou which is the local manufacturer of pegylated interferon alpha-2a in Iran (Pegaferon).
Institutional review board statement: This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Iranian Blood Transfusion Organization. The study protocol conformed to the ethical guidelines of the 1975 declaration of Helsinki.
Informed consent statement: Informed consent was obtained from all patients participating in the study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: This study was financially supported by Pooyesh Darou, which is the local manufacturer of pegylated interferon alpha-2a in Iran (Pegaferon®). The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Data sharing statement: Dataset is available from the corresponding author at m.keshvari@ibto.ir.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Maryam Keshvari, MD, Blood Transfusion Research Center, High Institute for Research and Education in Transfusion Medicine, Tehran 14665-1157, Iran. m.keshvari@ibto.ir
Telephone: +98-21-66592126 Fax: +98-21-66900386
Received: November 23, 2014
Peer-review started: November 24, 2014
First decision: December 11, 2014
Revised: February 10, 2015
Accepted: April 9, 2015
Article in press: April 9, 2015
Published online: August 7, 2015
Core Tip

Core tip: Chronic hepatitis C-infected Iranian patients treated with pegylated interferon and ribavirin showed relatively high rates of sustained virologic response. Treatment success was not influenced by hepatitis C virus genotype. However, a comparison of treatment success related to IFNL polymorphisms (also known as IL28B polymorphisms) using a logistic regression analysis revealed that the interferon-λ rs12979860 CC genotype was significantly associated with achieving a sustained virologic response.