Objective: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections have become increasingly chronic and the patients with chronic hepatitis C infections are given dual or triple antiviral drug combinations. However many factors are described affecting the response of the patients to treatment. One of them is the relationship between sustained virological response to treatment and IL-28B polymorphism. In this study, we aimed to investigate the relationship between the distribution of IL-28B (rs12979860) polymorphism.

Material and Methods: This study was conducted with chronic HCV patients undergoing peginterferon-ribavirin treatment. HCV RNA was investigated at the 12th week of the treatment, at the end, and at 6th month after treatment to determine early and persistent virological responses.

Results: The study included 41 patients, of whom 18 (43,9%) were male and 23 (56.1%) were female. In the study; the IL-28B SNP variant that is rs12979860 was found to be C/C genotype in 12.2%; T/T genotype in 19.5% and T/C genotype in 68.3% of the patients. Early virologic response was found to be 80% in C/C, 75% in T/T, and 82.1% in T/C genotype patients and no statistically significant difference was found between IL-28B genotypes in terms of early virologic response. Sustained virologic response was found as 100%, 62.5% and 46.4% in the C/C, T/T and T/C genotypes, respectively and it was found to be statistically significantly higher in C/C genotypes (p=0.035) relative to others.

Conclusion: We concluded that the chronic Hepatitis C patients with IL-28B SNP (rs12979860) C/C genotype have a relatively higher rate of SVR. However, in our region, C/C genotype is detected at a relatively lower rate in patients with chronic HCV and other genotypes with lower SVR are more common. Therefore, in the planning and follow-up of the treatment of patients with chronic HCV, consideration of the relatively lower rate of IL-28B rs12979860 C/C genotype in our region infection is thought to be useful.