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. 2014 Feb 1;209(3):350-4.
doi: 10.1093/infdis/jit433. Epub 2013 Aug 15.

Association of the IFNL4-ΔG Allele With Impaired Spontaneous Clearance of Hepatitis C Virus

Peter V Aka  1 , Mark H Kuniholm, Ruth M Pfeiffer, Alan S Wang, Wei Tang, Sabrina Chen, Jacquie Astemborski, Michael Plankey, Maria C Villacres, Marion G Peters, Seema Desai, Eric C Seaberg, Brian R Edlin, Howard D Strickler, David L Thomas, Ludmila Prokunina-Olsson, Gerald B Sharp, Thomas R O'Brien
Affiliations

Association of the IFNL4-ΔG Allele With Impaired Spontaneous Clearance of Hepatitis C Virus

Peter V Aka et al. J Infect Dis. .

Abstract

Interferon lambda 4 protein can be generated in IFNL4-ΔG carriers but not IFNL4-TT homozygotes. We studied 890 anti-hepatitis C virus (HCV)-positive participants in the Women's Interagency HIV Study. Among blacks (n = 555), HCV was more often cleared for those with genotype IFNL4-TT/TT (32.6%; odds ratio [OR], 3.59; P = 3.3 × 10(-5)) than IFNL4-TT/ΔG (11.3%; OR, 0.95; P = .86) or IFNL4-ΔG/ΔG (11.9%; referent). Pooling these data with published results in blacks (n = 1678), ORs were 3.84 (P = 8.6 × 10(-14)) for IFNL4-TT/TT and 1.44 (P = .03) IFNL4-TT/ΔG, and the area under the curve was 0.64 for IFNL4-ΔG genotype and 0.61 for rs12979860 (IL28B). IFNL4-ΔG is strongly associated with impaired spontaneous HCV clearance.

Keywords: HCV; IFNL4; IL28B; genetic; viral clearance.

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