Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a major cause of chronic liver disease, hepatocellular carcinoma, and deaths from liver disease and is the most common indication for liver transplantation (7,(26)(27)(28)38). HCV has been classified into seven major genotypes and a series of subtypes (35,36). In general, HCV genotype 4 (HCV-4) is common in the Middle East and Africa, where it is responsible for more than 80% of HCV infections (23). Although HCV-4 is the cause of approximately 20% of the 180 million cases of chronic hepatitis C in the world, it has not been a major subject of research.Egypt has the highest prevalence of HCV worldwide (15%) and the highest prevalence of HCV-4, which is responsible for 90% of the total HCV infections, with a predominance of the subtype 4a (HCV-4a) (1, 32). This extraordinarily high prevalence results in an increasing incidence of hepatocellular carcinoma in Egypt, which is now the second most frequent cause of cancer and cancer mortality among men (17, 21). More than 2 decades have passed since the discovery of HCV, and yet therapeutic options remain limited. Up to 2011, the standard treatment for chronic hepatitis C consisted of pegylated alpha interferon (PEG-IFN) and ribavirin (RBV) (19); however, by May 2011 two protease inhibitors (telaprevir and boceprevir) were approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in combination with PEG-IFN/ RBV for adult chronic hepatitis C patients with HCV genotype 1 (24, 34). Since the approval of these new protease inhibitors for treatment of HCV-1 infection, the response of HCV-4 to the standard regimen of treatment (PEG-IFN/RBV) has lagged behind other genotypes and HCV-4 has become the most resistant genotype to treat. As PEG-IFN/RBV still remains to be used to treat HCV-4-infected patients, exploring the factors that predict the outcome of PEG-IFN/RBV treatment, such as sustained virological response (SVR), for HCV-4 infections is needed to assess more accurately the likelihood of SVR and thus to make more informed treatment decisions.While the SVR rate for PEG-IFN/RBV treatment hovers at 50 to 60% in HCV-1 and -4 infection, it is up to 80% in HCV-2 and -3 infections (19,33). This difference in responses among patients infected with different HCV genotypes suggests that viral genetic heterogeneity could affect, at least to some extent, the sensitivity to IFN-based therapy. In this context, the correlation between IFNbased therapy outcome and sequence polymorphisms within the viral core and NS5A proteins has been widely discussed, in particular in regard to Japanese patients with HCV-1b infection. Initially, in the era of IFN monotherapy, it was proposed that sequence variations within a region in NS5A of HCV-1b, called the IFN sensitivity-determining region (ISDR), were correlated with IFN responsiveness (18). Subsequently, in the era of PEG-IFN/