Hepatic gene expression and prediction of therapy response in chronic hepatitis C patients.
Chronic hepatitis C (HCV) infection remains a major health problem worldwide. The current standard of care is a combination of pegylated interferon-alpha and ribavirin. Considering the length of antiviral therapy, as well as its side effects and costs, accurate prediction of treatment response prior to initiation of treatment is critical. In addition to viral, demographic and environmental factors, host genetic diversity is believed to contribute to the spectrum of clinical outcomes of chronic HCV. The development of high-throughput technologies provides opportunities to define patterns of gene expression that are associated with certain disease outcomes and/or response to therapy. This article reviews genomics-based predictors of pre-treatment response to antiviral therapy.
Selzner
Nazia
N
Multiorgan Transplant Program, University Health Network, University of Toronto, Toronto General Hospital, 585 University Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Chen
Limin
L
Borozan
Ivan
I
Edwards
Aled
A
Heathcote
E Jenny
EJ
McGilvray
Ian
I
D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D023281:Genomics; D019698:Hepatitis C, Chronic / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000378:metabolism; D006801:Humans; D008099:Liver / Q000378:metabolism*; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide