The Predictive Value of On-treatment Virological Response for Sustained Virological Response in Chronic Hepatitis C

The efficacy of combination antiviral therapy for chronic hepatitis C is influenced by many factors. Important patient-specific factors include, age, gender, race, body weight. Important virus-specific factors include HCV genotype and serum HCV RNA level. Finally, important treatment-related factors include the type of interferon, dose of ribavirin and the duration and adherence to treatment. Despite the importance of patient- and virus-specific factors, the most important indicator of treatment success is a rapid, profound and sustained decrease in serum HCV RNA levels after the start of treatment. The on-treatment virological response can thus be used to predict the probability that a given patient will achieve an SVR if they remain on therapy. It can also be used to individualize the duration of treatment. In this study, treatment for patients with chronic hepatitis C was individualized on the basis of clinical characteristics and the on-treatment virological response. The aim was to investigate the usefulness of undetectable HCV RNA levels at week 4 (RVR) and 12 in tailoring the duration of treatment and predicting SVR in Chinese patients with chronic hepatitis C.