Review of consensus interferon in the treatment of chronic hepatitis C

Abstract

Consensus interferon (CIFN) is an artificially engineered interferon that reflects most of the human genotype 1 interferons and shows a higher biological and antiviral capacity in vitro. It has been used internationally to treat patients with chronic hepatitis C (HCV) infection before pegylated IFN became available. To mimic the half-life of PEG-IFN it has to be administered on a daily basis. The gold standard in the treatment of hepatitis C is well established and recommended. Today patients are being treated with a combination therapy of pegylated IFN and ribavirin. Length and dosage of therapy depends on the genotype of the virus. Patients with genotype 1 and 4 and high viral load should be treated for 48 weeks; for patients with these genotypes along with either low viral load or early virological response, therapy for 24 weeks is sufficient. Patients with genotype 2 and 3 should be treated for up to 24 weeks. However, daily dosing of IFN-α, eg, CIFN, resulting in a higher cumulative dosage, might be beneficial and more efficacious in some chronic HCV-infected patients. Patients with genotype 1, having initially high viral load (>800,000 IU/mL) and showing advanced liver disease with progressive fibrosis or even cirrhosis comprise the difficult-to-treat in order to overcome the infection. This review summarizes and critically discusses the published data on the treatment of HCV with CIFN.

Ability of Orally Administered IFN-.ALPHA.4 to Inhibit Naturally Occurring Gingival Inflammation in Dogs

“…*, **, significantly different from after Mal values (* P<0.05; ** P<0.01). Low dose administration of IFN- is defined as IFN- administration with the amount of 0.05-1000 IU/kg, compared to high dose administration of IFN-, which is one of the traditional treatments by intramuscular or subcutaneous injection applied to hepatitis C, uses several hundreds to ten million IU/kg [39]. Human IFN- (HuIFN-) has been given orally in low doses to treat or prevent a number of infectious and immune-based diseases in a variety of species [2,7,14,26].…”

IFN‐α subtypes: distinct biological activities in anti‐viral therapy

“…In vitro studies demonstrated a higher anti-viral activity against vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) of CIFN compared with IFN-a2a or 2b (Ozes et al, 1992). Clinical studies with therapy-naive chronic HCV patients treated with CIFN plus ribavirin showed more SVR than with standard treatment (reviewed in Witthoft 2008) . However, due to its short half-life, CIFN has to be administered daily, which is an obvious disadvantage for clinical use.…”

Peginterferon Alfa-2a/Ribavirin treatment efficacy in chronic hepatitis C patients is related to natural killer group 2D gene rs1049174 GC polymorphism

“…A combined treatment including Peginterferon Alfa-2a/Ribavirin with or without protease inhibitor has become the standard course for the treatment of CHCV infection [10]. The efficacy of treatment depends on several factors such as baseline viral load, severity of liver disease, body weight, ethnicity and viral genotype with type 1 appearing to be less responsive to treatment than other types [44]. However, only about half of treated patients achieve a sustained virology response (SVR) in which serum HCV RNA become undetectable for at least 6 months after cessation of therapy.…”