Pretreatment serum macrophage inflammatory protein (MIP)-1 levels predict sustained virological responses to re-treatment in patients with chronic hepatitis C virus infection

Abstract

There are few predictors of the virological response in patients who are re-treated with antiviral therapies. In this study, we evaluated the levels of chemokines that bind to C-C chemokine receptor type 5 (CCR5) and their impact on combination therapy in both treatment-naïve and treatment-experienced patients chronically infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV). Longitudinal analysis of CCR5 chemokines was performed using the multiplex Bio-Rad 27-plex assay in 56 treatment-naïve and 24 treatment-experienced patients with chronic HCV infection during combination therapy with peginterferon alfa and ribavirin. A group of healthy donors was included as the control (n=11). The pretreatment level of macrophage inflammatory protein 1 (MIP-1) was determined to be an independent predictor, with an ideal predictive threshold for sustained virological response of 95.23 pg/ml. A rapid decline in HCV RNA was observed in patients with a pretreatment MIP-1 level of <95.23 pg/ml, while a slow reduction was measured in patients with levels of ≥95.23 pg/ml (p=0.014). Of note, the dynamics of MIP-1 further indicated that a lower level at baseline and at treatment week 12 was significantly associated with a favorable outcome of antiviral therapy (p=0.014), especially in treatment-experienced patients (p=0.04), while a higher level of MIP-1beta correlated with the elevation of transaminases. Serum MIP-1 is an independent and effective predictor of early and sustained virological response in chronically HCV-infected patients undergoing re-treatment.