BackgroundThe prevalence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections in elderly patients has been increasing in a number of countries. A few reports concerning pegylated interferon-α (PEG-IFN-α)-based combination treatment in elderly chronic hepatitis C (CHC) patients have been published, with slightly different treatment outcomes.ObjectivesWe investigated the treatment response and safety of PEG-IFN-α plus ribavirin combination therapy in elderly patients with CHC.Patients and MethodsAmong a total of 181 treatment-naïve CHC patients (60 patients with genotype 1, 121 patients with genotype 2 or 3), 38 were aged ≥ 65 years (defined as the elderly group) and 143 were aged < 65 years (defined as the non-elderly group).ResultsThe overall sustained virologic response (SVR) was lower in the elderly group than in the non-elderly group, but it was not significantly different (65.8 % vs. 76.2 %, P = 0.15). In a subgroup analysis, among patients with genotype 1, the elderly group had a significantly lower SVR rate than the non-elderly group (30.8 % vs. 66.0 %, P = 0.03). However, the SVR rate in patients with HCV genotype 2 or 3 was comparable between the two groups (84.0 % vs. 81.3 %, P = 0.85). HCV genotype was significantly associated with SVR in the elderly patients (genotype 1 vs. 2 or 3, odds ratio: 0.18, 95% confidence interval: 0.000-0.869, P = 0.03). The incidence of premature discontinuation of treatment (21.1 % vs. 9.1 %, P = 0.05) and dose modification (52.6 % vs. 31.5 %; P = 0.02) due mainly to adverse events or laboratory abnormalities, were higher in the elderly group than in the non-elderly group.ConclusionsPEG-IFN-α plus ribavirin combination therapy might be considered for elderly CHC patients, especially for genotype 2 or 3, with vigilant monitoring of adverse events.

Recent development in wireless communication technology like GPS as well as mobile equipments like PDA and cellular phone makes location-based services (LBSs) popular. However, because users request a query to LBS servers by using their exact locations while moving on the road network, users' privacy may not be protected in the LBSs. Therefore, a mechanism for users' privacy protection is required for the safe and comfortable use of LBSs by mobile users. For this, we, in this paper, propose a road network distance based cloaking scheme supporting user privacy protection in location-based services. The proposed scheme creates a cloaking area by considering road network distance, in order to support the efficient and safe LBSs on the road network. Finally, we show from our performance analysis that our cloaking scheme outperforms the existing cloaking scheme in terms of cloaking area and service time.