Interferon alpha treatment and retreatment of hepatitis B e antigen-negative chronic hepatitis B.
OBJECTIVE
In hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg)-negative chronic hepatitis B (CHBe-), interferon (IFN) achieves very low biochemical sustained response rates. No information exists on retreatment.


METHODS
Two hundred sixteen CHBe- patients treated for 5 or 12 months with 3 MU IFN-alpha2b thrice weekly and retreated (51 patients, 60 courses) because of no response or relapse were retrospectively analyzed.


RESULTS
After 7.0 years of median follow-up, 39 naive patients (18.1%) were still in biochemical and virologic remission after a single IFN course. Longer treatment and a biochemical response within 4 months were significant predictors, inversely related to relapse by multivariate analysis (relative hazard [RH], 0.611; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.448-0.834 and RH, 0.290; 95% CI, 0.192-0.438, respectively). Retreatment resulted in 18.4% sustained response by intention-to-treat (18 of 98 patients). Patients with sustained response had persistently normal alanine aminotransferase levels, undetectable hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA by molecular hybridization, and significant improvement of histologic grade, and 32% of them lost hepatitis B surface antigen. In sustained responders, serum HBV DNA was undetectable or very low at the end of treatment and at the end of follow-up (median 3934 and 903 copies/mL, respectively) by quantitative polymerase chain reaction.


CONCLUSIONS
IFN induced long-term biochemical and virologic remission in approximately 18% of naive or retreated patients with CHBe-. Sustained responders exhibited significant histologic improvement and a high rate of HBsAg loss.
Manesis
E K
EK
Academic Department of Medicine, Hippokration General Hospital, 114 Vas Sophias Avenue, Athens 115 25, Greece.
Hadziyannis
S J
SJ
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000998:Antiviral Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D005260:Female; D006513:Hepatitis B e Antigens / Q000097:blood*; D019694:Hepatitis B, Chronic / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000276:immunology / Q000473:pathology; D006801:Humans; D000077190:Interferon alpha-2; D016898:Interferon-alpha / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D011994:Recombinant Proteins; D012189:Retrospective Studies
D000998:Antiviral Agents; D006513:Hepatitis B e Antigens; D000077190:Interferon alpha-2; D016898:Interferon-alpha; D011994:Recombinant Proteins