Hope for Hepatitis C Treatment

Hepatitis C affects around 170 million people worldwide and is the leading cause of cirrhosis in the North America. Current treatments for the disease, which involve targeting proteins in the immune system, are difficult, time consuming, and quite often ineffective. David Goldstein and colleagues use a genome-wide association study to show that DNA sequence variations near the gene IL28B are associated with a significant change in the levels of treatment response when comparing European and African-American patients.

Because the variant associated with better treatment response was found to be more common in those of European decent compared to those of African origin it helps to explain why there is such a large difference in the effectiveness of treatment of the disease between these two populations of sufferers.

Author contact:

David Goldstein (Duke University, Durham, NC, USA)
E-mail: d.goldstein@duke.edu

Abstract available online.

(C) Nature  press release.

Message posted by: Trevor M. D'Souza