Chen ZW, et al. - This study sought to assess whether pegylated-interferon (Peg-IFN) plus ribavirin (P/R) treatment alters the rate of change of resistance-associated substitutions (RASs) to direct-acting antivirals in hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype 1a patients. As per findings, previous P/R treatment failure was not favorably associated with an increase in direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) RASs present in GT1a patients. Findings supported the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases’ recommendations of DAA intervention in P/R-treated GT1a patients.

Methods

• The genomic sequences of HCV genotype (GT) 1a patients from GenBank, which included patients naïve to P/R (pre-IFN group) and those previously treated with P/R (post-IFN group) were retrieved.
• Authors used MEGA 6.0 software to align and analyze the sequences.
• From the current medical literature, they summarized clinically relevant RASs.

Results

• The cross-sectional study suggested high total prevalence of clinically relevant RASs, this was independent of the treatment group (pre-IFN: 219/403 [54.34%] vs post-IFN: 67/131 [51.15%]).
• Authors detected the high prevalence mainly in the NS3 region RAS at Q80 (40.69% vs 36.64%).
• They noticed that the RASs in the NS5A region, such as M28, Q30, L31 and Y93, were uncommon (0%–5%).
• Similarly, the two groups indicated no difference regarding the RASs.
• In this study, one exception was the RAS at I170 in the NS3 region, which was significantly higher in the post-IFN group than in the pre-IFN group.
• The longitudinal study indicated similar results.
• However, there appeared no difference in RAS at I170 between the two groups.
• Finally, they detected no clinically relevant RASs in response to the DAA regimens approved for GT 1a patients treated with P/R.