الفهرس 
Hepatitis C VirusOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Hepatitis C is the most pressing public health
challenge in Egypt where hepatitis C Virus (HCV)
prevalence is the highest in the world. The success of
antiviral treatment in patients with chronic HCV (CHC)
depends on factors related to the virus and host. The earlier
work with telomerase showed that expression of the human
telomerase reverse transcriptase mRNA (hTERT) was
increased in hepatocyte cultures after overexpression of
HCV core protein as compared to normal human liver and
uninfected cells.
The aim of the present study is to evaluate hTERT
as an early prognostic factor for non-fibrotic CHC patients
schedule for 24 weeks treatment with pegylated interferon
and ribavirin (Peg-IFN/RBV) and the correlation between
hTERT follow-up with patients host factors.
The study was conducted on 50 chronic non-fibrotic
HCV newly diagnosed and recruited from Ain Shams
University hospitals. All patients (37 males/13 females)
were aged 30 years or older; they were seropositive for
HCV antibodies, with detectable HCV RNA; seronegative
for other viruses; and free of any other liver or metabolic
disease at enrollment. They have received antiviral
combination therapy with Peg-IFN/RBV scheduled for 24
weeks. All patients’ data were collected after admission
(baseline) and followed up after 4 and 24 weeks of
treatment for Prothrombin time (PT), complete blood count
(CBC), liver function tests, total cholesterol, alpha
fetoprotein (AFP) and real time PCR for HCV and hTERT.
The response rate at 24 weeks was 35/50 patients
(70%). We found that the factors that contribute to
virological response in detected hTERT patients were
leukocytes count (LR 34.1, p < 0.001), hTERT (LR=13;
p<0.004), and HCV (LR=9; p<0.01).
This study concluded that hTERT is a good early
predictor factor of virological response for non-fibrotic
CHC patients treated with combined therapy of Peg-IFN/
RBV taking into consideration the patient’s leukocyte
count and hTERT at baseline. We recommend that patients
with leukocyte count lower than 2.7 x 10^3 /μL with
undetected baseline hTERT are not good candidates for
treatment with combination therapy of Peg-IFN/RBV and
may better shift to another line of treatment.