Association Between Level of Hepatitis D Virus RNA at Week 24 of Pegylated Interferon Therapy and Outcome

Hepatitis D, B and C virus (HDV/HBV/HCV) coinfection as a diagnostic problem and therapeutic challenge

“…It appeared to be helpful when assessing the chance for negative HDV RNA 24 weeks after the end of treatment [17]. …”

EASL 2017 Clinical Practice Guidelines on the management of hepatitis B virus infection

“…165 The likelihood of the long-term response to PegIFNa can be estimated to some extent by HDV RNA and HBsAg kinetics at weeks 12 and 24. 164,[166][167][168][169] However, stopping PegIFNa prematurely at this stage is not recommended, if treatment is well tolerated, as the negative predictive values of these markers are not very strong, and late responses may occur in patients with early non-response. Furthermore, long-term follow-up studies suggest that an IFNa based therapy per se can be taken as an independent factor associated with a lower likelihood of disease progression, and to develop clinical endpoints.…”

Diagnosis, management and treatment of hepatitis delta virus infection: Turkey 2017 Clinical Practice Guidelines

“…Here, it is obvious that there is the need to successfully identify CDH patients who do not respond to treatment. If patients do not have more than 1 log 10 IU/mL decrease in serum HDV RNA in the sixth month of treatment, the possibility of non-response to treatment is high (34). For those who have at least 2 log 10 IU/mL of a decrease in HDV RNA at the end of treatment or who become negative at the end of the treatment and recurrence again, the logical approach seems to be continuing the antiviral treatment without stopping or reinitiating at the time of a recurrence.…”

“…This test should be performed at 6 months of PegIFN treatment. For example, from baseline, no any decrease in HBsAg levels is associated with treatment unresponsiveness (34).…”