The clinical features and treatment outcome of chronic hepatitis C with pegylated interferon and ribavirin in routine care

AIM: To describe the clinical characteristic of hepatitis C (HCV) patients and the results of pegylated interferon and ribavirin (PegIFN/RBV) therapy in a routine clinical practice.

METHODS: A retrospective review of consecutive HCV patients treated with PegIFN/RBV in 2004 to 2012.

RESULTS: A total of 273 patients received treatment. The mean age was 44.16 ± 10.5 years and 76% were male. The top 2 self-reported risks were blood or blood product transfusion before 1994 and injection drug use, found in 57.1% of patients. The predominant HCV genotype (GT) was 3 at 60.6%, second was GT1 at 36.1% and other GTs were uncommon at about 1% or less. About half of our patients have high baseline viral load (>800,000 iu/ml), 18.3% had liver cirrhosis and 22.3% had HIV co-infection. Co-morbid illness was found in 42.9%, hypertension and type 2 diabetes were the two most common. The overall sustained virological response (SVR) by intention-to-treat analysis were 54.9% (n=150/273), 41.2% (40/97) for GT1, 100% (5/5) for GT2 and 62% (101/163) for GT3. Subgroup analysis for HCV monoinfected, treatment naïve showed SVR of 49.2% (31/63) for GT1, 100% (5/5) for GT2 and 67% (69/103) for GT3. In HCV mono-infected and treatment experienced (n=29), the SVR was 28.6% (4/14) for GT1, 21.4% (69/103) for GT3. In the HIV/HCV co-infected, treatment naïve (n=56), the SVR was 28.6% (4/14) for GT1 and 64.3% (27/42) for GT3. Treatment naïve GT3 mono-infected patients had a statistically significant higher SVR compared to treatment experienced patients (P=0.001). In GT3 patients who achieved rapid virological response, the SVR was significantly higher at 85.2% (P< 0.001). The SVR for cirrhotics were low especially for GT1 at 21% (4/19) and 31% (4/13) based on all patients and treatment naïve HCV monoinfected respectively. In GT3 cirrhotics the corresponding SVR were 57.1% (16/28) and 60.9% (14/23). Premature discontinuation rate was 21.2% with the majority due to intolerable adverse events at 12.1%.

CONCLUSIONS: In our routine clinical practice, the HCV patients we treated were young, predominantly of GT3 and many had difficult-to-treat clinical characteristics. The SVR of our patients were below those reported in Asian clinical trials but in keeping with some "real world" data.