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©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Virology. Aug 12, 2015; 4(3): 178-184
Published online Aug 12, 2015. doi: 10.5501/wjv.v4.i3.178
Published online Aug 12, 2015. doi: 10.5501/wjv.v4.i3.178
Is the use of IL28B genotype justified in the era of interferon-free treatments for hepatitis C?
Tatsuo Kanda, Shingo Nakamoto, Osamu Yokosuka, Department of Gastroenterology and Nephrology, Chiba University, Graduate School of Medicine, Chiba 260-8677, Japan
Author contributions: Kanda T, Nakamoto S and Yokosuka O solely contributed to this paper.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Tatsuo Kanda reports receiving lecture fees from Chugai Pharmaceutical, MSD, Tanabe-Mitsubishi, Ajinomoto, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Daiichi-Sankyo, Janssen Pharmaceutical and GlaxoSmithKline; Osamu Yokosuka reports receiving grant support from Chugai Pharmaceutical, Bayer, MSD, Daiichi-Sankyo, Tanabe-Mitsubishi, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Gilead Sciences and Taiho Pharmaceutical; the other authors have no conflict of interest statement.
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: Tatsuo Kanda, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Gastroenterology and Nephrology, Chiba University, Graduate School of Medicine, 1-8-1 Inohana, Chuo-ku, Chiba 260-8670, Japan. kandat-cib@umin.ac.jp
Telephone: +81-43-2262086 Fax: +81-43-2262088
Received: April 25, 2015
Peer-review started: April 28, 2015
First decision: June 18, 2015
Revised: June 25, 2015
Accepted: July 21, 2015
Article in press: July 23, 2015
Published online: August 12, 2015
Peer-review started: April 28, 2015
First decision: June 18, 2015
Revised: June 25, 2015
Accepted: July 21, 2015
Article in press: July 23, 2015
Published online: August 12, 2015
Core Tip
Core tip: Genome-wide association studies have revealed that interleukin-28B (IL28B) genotypes are associated with the response to interferon therapy for chronic hepatitis C. The mechanism of this association is not yet clear. Although many hepatitis C virus (HCV)-infected individuals have IL28B favorable alleles, in the near future, HCV-infected patients in Japan may be treated with interferon-free regimens, which avoid the adverse events caused by interferon plus ribavirin therapy.