Short- and long-term outcome of interferon therapy for chronic hepatitis B infection

Table 1 Summary of the studies of the response to interferon-based treatment on hepatitis B virus genotypes

Ref.	Study type	Number ofpatients(treated/controls)	IFN	Region of origin	HBeAg-positive (%)	Treatment endpoint	Treatment endpoint by HBV genotype (%)	Significance(P value)
Wai et al[26]	Retrospective, unmatched controls	107 (73/34)	IFN α	China	100.0	HBeAg seroconversion	B: 39 C: 17	0.03
Kao et al[27]	Retrospective, unmatched controls	58 (58/0)	IFN α	Taiwan	100.0	Loss of HBeAg and HBV DNA 48 wk post-treatment	B: 41 C: 15	0.045
Zhang et al[28]	Retrospective, unmatched controls	35 (35/0)	IFN α	France	0.0	Normalization of ALT, loss of HBV DNA by a branched-DNA assay 6 mo post-treatment	A: 70 non-A: 40	0.001
Erhardt et al[29]	Retrospective, unmatched controls	165 (69/72)	IFN α	Germany, Mediterranean, Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa	A: 51.4 B: 5	HBeAg-positive: normalization of ALT, negative HBV DNA by a hybridization assay, and HBeAg seroconversion 6 mo post-treatment HBeAg-negative: loss of HBV DNA by a hybridization assay and the normalization of ALT 6 mo post-treatment	(overall) A: 49 D: 26	0.005
					C: 8.4 D: 31.9		(HBeAg-positive) A: 46 D: 24	0.03
					E: 2.5 G: 0.8		(HBeAg-negative) A: 59 D: 29	0.05
Flink et al[30]	Prospective, multicenter randomized controlled trials	266 (266/0)	Peg- IFN-α-2b +/- lamivudine	The Netherlands	100.0	Loss of HBsAg at the end of follow-up	A: 14 B: 9 C: 3 D: 2	0.006
Erhardt et al[32]	Retrospective, cohort	49 (23/26)	IFN α	Germany, Hong Kong, France	E: 47 F: 50 G: 50 H: 60	Normalization of ALT, decrease of HBV DNA < 4000IU/mL 6 mo post-treatment	E: 36 F: 50 G: 20 H: 50	NA

IFN: Interferon; HBeAg: Hepatitis e antigen; HBV: Hepatitis B virus; ALT: Alanine aminotransferase; NS: Not significant; NA: Not available.