Behavior of soluble HLA-A, -B, -C and HLA-G molecules in patients with chronic hepatitis C virus infection undergoing pegylated interferon-α and ribavirin treatment: potential role as markers of response to antiviral therapy.

Abstract

The serum levels of soluble HLA class I antigens (sHLA-A, -B, -C and sHLA-G) were determined in 40 HCV genotype 1-infected patients before (T 0), after 3, 6, and 12months (T 3, T 6, and T 12) of pegylated-IFN-α plus ribavirin therapy and 6months (T 18) after the end of treatment. Twenty patients were sustained virological responders (SVR), and 20 were non-responders (NR). sHLA-A, -B, -C levels at T 0 were significantly higher in both SVR (mean 10.48μg/ml) and NR (mean 11.87μg/ml) patients as compared to healthy controls (mean 0.34μg/ml, p<0.0001) and HIV-infected subjects (mean 1.22μg/ml, p<0.0001). sHLA-G levels at T 0 were significantly higher in SVR (mean 24.78ng/ml) and NR (mean 24.93ng/ml) patients as compared to healthy controls (mean 10.34ng/ml, p=0.015 and p=0.014, respectively) but were lower as compared to HIV-infected subjects (mean 48.00ng/ml, p<0.0001). The levels of sHLA-A, -B, -C and sHLA-G significantly decreased in SVR from T 0 to T 18 (mean 1.64 and 1.43ng/ml, respectively, p<0.0001) and correlated with HCV-RNA, AST, ALT, γGT, and ALP levels. The determination of soluble HLA class I levels could be proposed as a surrogate marker to discriminate SVR and NR HCV-infected patients during PEG-IFN-α plus ribavirin therapy.