icon-    folder.gif   Conference Reports for NATAP  
 
  17th CROI
Conference on Retroviruses
and Opportunistic Infections
San Francisco CA
February 16-19, 2010
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Strong Association of a Single Nucleotide Polymorphism Located Near the Interleukin-28b Gene with Response to Hepatitis C Therapy in HIV/HCV Co-infected Patients
 
 
  Reported by Jules Levin
CROI 2010
 
Norma Rallon*1, S Naggie2, J Benito1, J Medrano1, C Restrepo1, D Goldstein3, K Shianna3, J McHutchison2, and V Soriano1 1Hosp Carlos III, Madrid, Spain; 2Duke Clin Res Inst, Durham, NC, US; and 3Inst for Genome Sci and Policy, Durham, NC, US
 
Background: Response to hepatitis C therapy is lower for HIV/HIV co-infected than HCV-monoinfected patients. Given that current HCV therapy is poorly tolerated, there is interest in the identification of better predictors of treatment response. A SNP located near the IL28b gene (rs12979860), which codes for IFN-λ, has recently been found to predict treatment response in HCV-monoinfected patients with HCV genotype 1. There is no information in HIV/HCV co-infected individuals and/or other HCV genotypes.
 
Methods: From a cohort of 650 HIV/HCV co-infected patients receiving care at a single clinic in Madrid, Spain, we included 198 patients completing therapy with pegylated interferon-ribavirin with validated outcomes (106 SVR versus 92 non-responders; overall SVR 46%) who had informed written consent for DNA testing. The SNP near the IL28b gene, rs12979860, was examined using the 5’ nuclease assay with allele specific TaqMan probes. Genotyping was conducted in a blinded fashion. Bivariate (chi-square test) and multivariate (logistic regression) analyses were used to determine predictors of treatment outcome.
 
Results: In this study, 164 patients were included in the IL28b genotyping final analysis; 34 patients had inadequate sample for analysis. HCV genotype distribution included: HCV-1 58%, HCV-3 31%, and HCV-4 11%. The SVR rate was significantly higher in patients with the CC alleles than in those with CT/TT alleles across all HCV genotypes (Table 1). In the multivariate analysis, the rs12979860 CC genotype was a strong predictor of SVR (OR = 3.4; 95%CI 1.4 to 7.9; P =0.006), independent of other well-known predictors such as HCV genotype 3 (OR = 8.1; 3.0 to 21.7; P <0.0001), baseline serum HCV-RNA <600,000 IU/mL (OR = 13.9; 3.9 to 48.1; P <0.001) and fibrosis < F3-F4 (OR = 3.4; 1.3 to 9.2; P =0.016).
 
Table 1: SVR rate by prevalence of polymorphism

Conclusions: The rs12979860 SNP located near the IL28b gene is strongly associated with SVR in HIV/HCV co-infected patients. The impact is recognized across all HCV genotypes. These findings suggest that IL28b genotyping may play a critical role in the medical management of this difficult-to-treat population.

RESULTS